by Judith Curry
I am starting to get requests from journalists to comment on the documents leaked from Heartland.
For background, here are some of the articles from the ‘green’ perspective that have been written on the topic (list pulled from getenergysmartnow):
- Brendan DeMelle, Heartland Institute Exposed: Internal Documents Unmask Heart of Climate Denial Machine, DeSmogBlog (links to all of the leaked documents)
- Chris Mooney, “Dissuading Teachers From Teaching Science”: The Leak of Alleged Heartland Institute Documents, The Intersection
- Joe Romm, Heartland Documents Reveal Fringe Denial Group Plans to Pursue Koch Money, Dupe Children and Cultivate Revkin, Climate Progress
- James Hrynyshyn, The Heart(land) of the Denial Campaign, Class M
- Leo Hickman, Leaked Heartland Institute documents pull back curtain on climate scepticism, The Guardian
- Suzanne Goldenberg, Leak exposes how Heartland Institute works to undermine climate science, The Guardian
- Heartland Institute budget and strategy revealed, DeepClimate
- Greg Laden, HeartlandGate: Anti-Science Institute’s Insider Reveals Secrets, Culture as Science — Science as Culture
- Greg Laden, The Meaning of Heartland Gate, Culture as Science — Science as Culture
- Brad Johnson, INTERNAL DOCUMENTS: The Secret, Corporate-Funded Plan To Teach Children That Climate Change Is A Hoax, Think Progress: Green
- Peter Sinclair, How is Joe Bast Like Joe Camel? Looks Like We’re Going to Find Out….., Climate Denial Crock of the The Week
- Michael Tobis, Is Turnabout Fair Play?, Planet 3.0 — Beyond Sustainability
- Shawn Lawrence Otto, Climate Denial Bombshell, NeoRenaissance
- Jonathan Eisen, Leaked insider docs from Heartland Institute goal: “dissuading teachers from teaching science” (ps hey Scholarly Kitchen do you support this?), The Tree of Life
- Zachary Shanan, Fossil-Fuel-Funded Think Tank, Heartland Institute, Exposed (Deniergate? Heartlandgate? Pick a Name), Clean Technica
- Phil Plait, Breaking news: A look behind the curtain of the Heartland Institute’s climate change spin, Bad Astronomy
- Christian Hunt, Undermining the IPCC, keeping opposing voices out, dissuading the teaching of science – Heartland in its own words?, The Carbon Brief
- William Connelly, Heartland, Stoat
- Keith Kloor, Climate Skeptic Organization Feels the Heat, Collide-a-Scape
- Steve Zwick, Blog reveals Climate Change Denier Group’s CorporateBackers, Forbes
- Will Nichols, Will Heartland Institute scandal force transparency on corporate donors?, BusinessGreen
- J.A., Trouble in the Heartland?, The Economist
- Richard Littlemore, Mashey Report Confirms Heartland’s Manipulation; Exposes Singer’s Deception, DeSmogBlog
- Canucks On Heartland Institute Payroll, Big City Lib Strikes Back
- Katherine Stewart, The new anti-science assault on US schools, The Guardian
- Jess Zimmerman, How the Heartland Institute plans to wreck education, Grist
For a perspective from the skeptical/libertarian side, see climatedepot.
- Heartland documents: what’s the big deal? ‘These [skeptical] sums are loose change compared to the billions that are funneled to green groups, alarmist research establishments…’‘.
- ‘With tiny budgets like $310 million, $100 million, & $95 million respectively, how can Greenpeace, Sierra Club, & NRDC *ever* hope to compete with mighty Heartland’s $6.5 million?’ — Revealed: The ‘heart of the climate denial machine’ allegedly relies on $200k per year donated from Koch to Heartland
- ‘How did Heartland allegedly win climate debate by buying scientists for $300k, while warmists lost it while splitting up $79 billion in US govt money?
- Heartland Institute bad – DeSmogBlog says so! ‘Did you know the Heartland Institute employs skeptics?’
- Warmist Kelly Rigg is outraged that a ‘well-funded’ organization should dare to spend a dollar to counter every 47 dollars spent by an organization she’s run campaigns for’
- Flashback: Read Climate Depot’s report on the warmist funding vs. skeptical funding — Warmists funding massive compared to paltry skeptical funding
- Warmist Tobis: ‘Is Turnabout Fair Play?’ — ‘The bit about ‘dissuading teachers from teaching science’ was presumably just a sloppy edit, right?’
- Heartland Institute documents leaked: ‘Documents published on Desmog blog & elsewhere, which appear to detail US think-tank’s budget and anti-climate-change strategy’
- Aussie Skeptical scientist denies he is mouthpiece of US climate-skeptic think tank
- ‘UK Greenie George Monbiot claims it’s ‘deeply sinister’ for one dollar in private money to be used to counter $100 in public money that NASA is using to promote the climate hoax’
- ‘According to the most recent data on guidestar.org, Joe Romm’s Center for American Progress spends 10 times as much money as Morano’s CFACT’ —
- Warmists Declare: ‘Heartland Institute Exposed: Internal Documents Unmask Heart of Climate Denial Machine’
- Warmist headbangers go ape over Heartland finance leak:
JC statement
I wasn’t going to comment on this until the weekend, but looks like I better say something, since I was quick out the gate with my comments on Climategate. Here is the text of a statement I made to a reporter, when asked some specific questions:
A few weeks ago, I had a thread called ‘climate classroom‘ over at Climate Etc. David Wojick participated extensively in the comments on the thread, see his own blog post here. David Wojick engages extensively over at Climate Etc., he seems to have political views that are consonant with Heartland, but he does not come across as a propagandist. I don’t know exactly what he is trying do with this K-12 project, I will ask him and maybe discuss this on the blog this weekend.
My summary comment on the blog post was:
Why am I giving a “raspberry” to the NCSE initiative? This seems like propaganda, pure and simple. Keep it out of the K-12 classrooms.
With regards to K-12 education, there is no particular reason to teach ‘climate change’ in the K-12 curriculum. Climate change is a topic that is more suitable high school ‘science and society’ courses. In such courses, teaching the controversy would seem to be of paramount importance. Critical thinking and understanding the complex societal factors that are influenced by science and influence science itself would be of value in such a course, although intelligent and appropriate handling of such a course at the high school level is a challenge.
With regards to Heartland giving Wojick funds for K-12 education, it is not clear to me how this is different from the NCSE initiative. State and local governments need to make judgments regarding what materials are taught in K-12. If/how to teach climate change in K-12 remains an open issue.
With regards to Singer and Idso getting funds from Heartland, this is not surprising and they have never claimed not to be getting funds from such groups. Some scientists receive funds from organizations such as WWW, Environmental Defense, etc., so this is not something unique to Heartland. The funding that Watts is hoping to receive seems to be in a different category: he is looking for private funds for a specific project, rather than to be on a monthly retainer such as the others. This would seem to be similar to what Rich Muller pulled together to fund the BEST project (one of the donors was the Koch brothers). Personally, as an academic, I religiously steer clear of such funding (not that any of it has ever been offered to me, other than travel funds to attend an event); it compromises your appearance of objectivity. The problem is when a scientist receives such funds and does not declare it in a journal publication, review panel, or government advisory committee where there would be an explicit conflict of interest that should be declared. I don’t see that as an issue for Singer or Idso; most people are aware that they receive funds from orgs such as Heartland.
Re Heartland’s funding, I did a previous blog post on this: Blame on Heartland-Cato-Marshall-Etc. Much information about total amount and funding sources is publicly available from sourcewatch. The surprising thing is the paltry funding that the libertarian think tanks have relative to the green groups (e.g. WWF, Greenpeace, etc.) The more interesting question to me is how have these groups been so effective with so little funds, relative to the much larger expenditures by the green groups.
Re the parallels to Climategate. They are similar in the sense that they give us a behind the scenes peak at how the IPCC and Heartland works. In terms of moral equivalence, what Heartland is doing is not surprising; seems to be no different than what other advocacy groups do. The IPCC is a very different organization, and also the CRU/UEA, with explicit requirements for government accountability. So in terms of a scandal, I would have to say that Heartlandgate is nowhere near Climategate.
You had your opportunity to express dismay with the politicization of the climate debate on the “skeptical” side of the debate, Judith.
I’d give your response to that opportunity a “raspberry.”
Sad.
Joshua,
I am more concerned that public funds were squandered for four decades (1971-2011) to support one side of these issue and to hide evidence these models were seriously flawed:
a.) AGW model of Earth’s climate, and the
b.) Bilderberg model of Earth’s heat source – the Sun
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10640850/Climategate_Roots.pdf
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10640850/NeutronRepulsion.pdf
All of society is now suffering the consequences of government policies based on these scientifically unsound models.
For comparison, Joshua, more than $1,000 million US $$ (> $1 billion US dollars, more than $1,000,000,000,000) were spent to acquire samples and to perform precise quantitative analysis on each of the following:
a) The Apollo Mission to the Moon (NASA)
b) Atomic rest masses of all atoms (DOE)
c) The Galileo Mission to Jupiter (NASA)
The results shown in the above manuscript, “Neutron repulsion,” fit together nicely to show that Earth’s heat source today is the same nuclear furnace that made our elements and spit them out five billion years (5 Gyr) ago at the birth of the Solar System.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10640850/The_Sun.pdf
This 1998 CSPAN recording of NASA’s Administrator releasing isotope data that confirmed the above conclusion – data that NASA acquired in 1995 – is an issue that the US NAS, the UN IPCC and the UK RS cannot avoid if credibility is to be restored in leaders of the scientific community
What goes on in advocacy groups is very different than what goes on in the academic world. I mostly don’t pay much attention to what goes on in advocacy groups, and mostly assume that what goes on from both sides pretty much cancels itself out in terms of influence.
“both sides pretty much cancels itself out in terms of influence.”
That’s really naive or more correctly wilfully blind. Considering warming agenda setters out spend skeptics 50 to 1. (you posted enough links above, try reading them)
Not to mention the fact that key NGO and government driven forces like the IPCC and media are by in large advocacy groups themselves.
What do you think they are advocating and what political culture are they part of?? (it isn’t that hard to figure out, only to admit it seems)
Statements like this defy logic on the face of it.
“I mostly don’t pay much attention to what goes on in advocacy groups”
Like almost everything you write, this is disingenous … the subject here — your own subject is what’s going on in this advocacy group that’s pretending to do “thinking” and science.
“and mostly assume that what goes on from both sides pretty much cancels itself out in terms of influence.”
You mostly assume a lot of things that aren’t true.
Dr. Curry,
The climategate team gets their e-mails ignored. Heartland gets theirs fabricated and instantly spread around. The team gets cover form their pals in government. Heartland gets falsely accused.
The team gets to pretend the science is settled. Heartland gets condemned for even asking questions.
such a symmetrical view of influence is downright convenient don’t you think Judith?
In an ideal world. Maybe.
A funder will always influence what it funds, and climate alarmism holding such huge promise of political expansionism, it is pretty well unavoidable that government-funded climate science will select for people and projects that favor political expansionism, ie totalitarian-leaning ideology.
While what Judith said is not what I would say, I think it very well represents an honest scientist who hasn’t jumped on either political side of this issue, but is trying to do the science. We need more people like her.
Quite frankly having the warmists jump up and down like this is a big deal shows how completely out of touch with reality they are. They are showing this is David vs Goliath and they are complaining that David has some stones (in more ways than one).
“it is pretty well unavoidable that government-funded climate science will select for people and projects that favor political expansionism, ie totalitarian-leaning ideology”
Wow- someone had better tell that to the data and the science that comes out of it. Maybe CERN is going to manipulate the Large Hadron Collider data to show that we are about to be swallowed by a bunch of micro-black holes, so that a “totalitarian” world government can be set up to save us.
The original comment shows how people think that just because politics can be manipulated with money and ideology, that science is subject to exactly the same degree of manipulation. In the short term, maybe, but the process corrects itself by rewarding people who come up with new theories backed by real data, which eventually breaks paradigms and leads to a new consensus. As we’ve seen with the BEST analysis, real data just becomes part of the “totalitarian conspiracy” for climate change deniers.
Anyone should be able to see the difference between, say $5M given to a government organisation research whether a drug is effective, and $500K given by a drug company to a think tank to lobby and advertise their drug as being necessary. 10x the funding, but which funding is going to be the one with bias?
“”people think that just because politics can be manipulated with money and ideology, that science is subject to exactly the same degree of manipulation.””
But Indulis, we know they who have sold science for a buck, and they will be made infamous by history.
“”In the short term, maybe, but the process corrects itself by rewarding people who come up with new theories backed by real data, which eventually breaks paradigms and leads to a new consensus””
Unfortunately, dogma is holding you back from rewards. It is sceptical scientists who have the data and theory to break the AGW paradigm now. Not later, right now.
it is pretty well unavoidable that government-funded climate science will select for people and projects that favor political expansionism, ie totalitarian-leaning ideology
@INDULIS
[this] shows how people think that just because politics can be manipulated with money and ideology, that science is subject to exactly the same degree of manipulation.
Well of course it does; he who pays the piper calls the tune. And in this case, politics is funding science, so where there are political implications – hugely the case in climate science, obviously – the ‘science’ will to some extent pander to politics. You’d have to be spectacularly naive to think there’s no connection between the facts that
(a) 99.99+% of climate science is politically funded; and
(b) the ‘consensus’ strongly supports a totalitarian lurch – more taxes etc etc.
Joshua, skeptics did not politicize science, they just reacted to it. Don’t blame the defenders for the war.
David,
It’s always disturbing that Gainists, Greenshirts and Government Authority figures cast themselves as “the underdog” in these matters. It’s close to delusional since they are massively funded, part of a self-created authority called “consensus” and resort to the worst sort of bully tactics on a daily basis.
Joshua live in an alternate reality as many climate zombies do.
David, you’re a pathetic liar
@ Marcel
Spoken like a true AGW advocate. Nothing ever comes out of their potty mouths about the science; always just personal attacks. But I have to give you all credit, You are all one trick ponies.
David,
Joshua is a pathetic troll, like a cold that just lingers on, critical thinking is not his strong suit.
Josh,
You are easily the most disingenuous putz posting at any site you post at.
If you think your side has not politicized this, you are either an idiot, a liar or both.
The limeball game you guys play of pretending you are above politics as you push your bs whiile anyone who disagrees is a cynical hack is such transparent deception as to make one wonder why you think anyone believes your faux outrage at all.
You specifically lied in your misrepresentation of David’s work on curriculum.
You are a troll’s troll.
hunter –
I don’t know what you fantasize to be my “side.” But I can assure you that you have never, ever, in any of my posts, found me saying that the hypocritical behavior I’m describing is found only on one side of the debate.
What I find interesting is that despite your numerous responses to my posts, presumably based upon your having actually read my posts, you still manage to mischaracterize what I say on a regular basis.
Go ahead, hunter. Find one, single, solitary example of me saying that this kind of hypocrisy exists on only one side of the debate.
I’ll wait.
Joshua,
You can pretend all you want.
Your slimy attack on David speaks far more loudly.
Joshua, you give exactly no reason why you give it a raspberry and how the opportunity was lost. I think Judith has evaluated this situation correctly. Heartland, like other NGO’s, has an agenda…. it is also clear they have far less funding. I give your comment a raspberry.
“The ‘green perspective’ had the IPCC publish and defend the Himalayan glaciers melting by 2035 and drying up the rivers.”
Unlike the climate change deniers, the scientific process made sure the IPCC corrected the error publicly. Great, the glaciers will take a few decades longer to melt! Thats like having the fire chief walk up to you when your house is on fire and say “Great news, your house is burning slower than we thought! We thought it would burn down in an hour, it’ll take six!”
Now what happens with Mr Watts when faced with his mistakes? That BEST disproves categorically his pet theory that badly placed temperature stations produce false warming signals? Did he admit his mistakes? Have ANY climate change deniers admitted they have to drop the “earth is not warming” bunkum? Well, a scientist would accede and say he was wrong. Watts just drags out more mud to throw, and conspiracy theories to throw around.
“”Great, the glaciers will take a few decades longer to melt!””
except Indulis, the glaciers will take eons to melt, given they are currently expanding. Why did India get rid of its IPCC glacier adviser?
It’s no surprise that the Heartland Institute looks favorably on you, and no surprise that you defend them.
“from the ‘green’ perspective” — aka science.
“the skeptical/libertarian side” — aka liars and scoundrels.
Marcel,
The ‘green perspective’ had the IPCC publish and defend the Himalayan glaciers melting by 2035 and drying up the rivers. Don’t talk to us about ‘green perspective’ = science. Sell that crap over at Romm’s or RC.
You refer to your cult as ‘science’, good one.
Marcel: are you describing all climate sceptics liars and scoundrels? Or just David Wojick?
“Greenpeace commissioned one of the world’s leading reef biologists to find out what caused the dramatic coral decay.”
http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/stories/s34128.htm
I think all researchers who took money from Greenpeace, WWF, Tides, Sierra Club and their lilk should give it to charity, rescind their papers and resign from the IPCC.
That’s deep from the memory hole. It’s a nice thought and link but not a likely outcome.
Joshua; Judith is spot on. dismay with the politicization of a political entity? what are you smoking? WWF, greenpeace, etc. aren’t politicized completely? (by the way, with WAY more money than heartland). where is your complaint about them?
Joshua,
perhaps you would care to consider the difference between politicizing the science (as indicated in the climategate emails) and using the science for political ends (as indicated in the HI leak) – in the first, the published record of supposedly independent bodies is being distorted to suit a politcal agenda, while in the second advocates are selectively quoting the published record to bolster their case. Can you not see the difference? Surely the second is an expected and normal part of the political to and fro, whereas the first is an attack on the very science you claim to support and value.
Neil –
I do see a difference in the abstract, but I don’t see how it is distinction of significance. In either case, if there is a real world distinction, the goal of a reasoned discussion of the science is not being served – and in fact, is being undermined. In fact, in the end, I think it is arguable (going with your abstraction) that w/r/t the societal/public impact of the different views in the debate, and hence the significant policies that result, those in your second grouping carry more weight than those in your first grouping. In fact, however, while I see a potentially abstract “difference” (but not distinction), in the real world I don’t see that there is some definable line of distinction between those “politicizing the science (as indicated in the climategate emails) and [those] using the science for political ends.” I think that you are creating a false dichotomy.
Further, certainly, “skeptics” have a lot to say about some advocacy groups selectively using science to bolster their political agenda – so again, my issue isn’t so much with what Heartland does (I don’t see it as being significantly distinctive than anyone politicizing science, a phenomenon that is as ubiquitous as it is inevitable given the nature and psychology of how people reason) as much as it is with the selective “concern” for politicizing science that I see in these pages. Narrowing the selective concern down a bit, have you not seen “concern” among “skeptics” over politically-motivated people creating educational curricula for use with students? Do you not find it interesting that in reaction to the Heartland documents, that “concern” seems to be absent among “skeptics”?
If you don’t expect all scientists, or anyone else, to have biases effecting how they evaluate evidence, then you have a different view of scientists and human nature than I.
G’morning children, are we going to save the planet from boiling today, again? Remember: blowing raspberries tells everything about the blower
Get your fire trucks ready, wrrrrrrm, wrrrrrrm; Warmist on one side of the sandpit – the Fake Sceptics on the other side. If you get naughty, naughty; you are not going to get a lollypop! Saving the planet is a feel gooood; isn’t it? Same as when you pee in your dark colour pants > you feel nice and warm inside, but nobody notices… Other Smarties like you, on other blogs are saving even Venus and Mercury from GLOBAL warmings; you children here are still releasing your own methane to warm your own planet; by pushing your fire-truck up the sandpit… you should push it up much harder, otherwise will not be any din-din for you, and Santa is not going to like youuu!
Ready now? Since this morning, until lunch time; the planet will get warmer by 12C. Just keep looking at your thermometer and you will see; thermometers don’t tell lies, people do. Warmist believe 90% in possibility of GLOBAL warming; Skeptics believe 101% in GLOBAL warming… Al Gore will give his kingdom, for a packet of Plimer’s Smartie like you… very, very gooood. Keep singing your only song for thousandth time: albedo, convection, noise, observation, signals, wavelengths – equilibriummmmm! Keep repeating it; it’s meant for you never to forget it. Repeat it 1000 times; all of you, individually – then start from the beginning again – if you want to make the physiatrists rich. Repetition is the tool for brainwashing / bleaching the human brains. Actually, with repetition one can train most of the animals. When you realize that GLOBAL warming is only inside your heads, let me know. Bottom line: there wasn’t any Global warming, and is not going to be one, zero, zilch!!! So-far, the Fake Skeptics are more noisy, for getting much less money from the loot. Because is more of them, they need more money – they will need to buy more strait-jackets. They will need more money for psychiatrists. When they realise that: Warmist prosper on Fake Skeptic’s stupidity. ”tell a lie to a fool 7 times; he will believe in it same as any fanatic idiot” From both camps, you should all blow raspberries, as a symbol of insanity – will get higher compensation from IPCC for ”brains degradation”
Thanks, Professor Curry.
I suspect that the funds involved in Heartland are tiny compared to the public funds squandered to promote the AGW dogma, but it is important to keep an open mind and present all sides.
Anthony Watts has an excellent review at:
Some notes on the Heartland Leak
Time for a major fund raiser for Anthony and WUWT. He deserves far more his efforts in restoring integrity to science then the $1.6 million to James Hansen.
The Heartland Institute posts:
The Heartland Institute has provided the best foil to the IPCC – that of serious review by the NIPCC of the published but ignored scientific evidence.
To restore the integrity of science, this provides all the more reason to support the NIPCC.
Heartland is calling one of the documents a fake.
http://heartland.org/press-releases/2012/02/15/heartland-institute-responds-stolen-and-fake-documents
ya its document properties are screwy and dont match the others.
Fred, the facts aren’t going to get in the way of this. Think Dan Rather and the fake slander national guard papers; “Fake but accurate”. Sort of like the Hockey Stick.
Lucia has the most sensible repsonse with respect to WUWT and the Guardian.. imho
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2012/tell-me-whats-horrible-about-this/
Lucia concludes:
To Anthony, I say: Congratulations for convincing Heartland to fund a project that might actually permit the public to have access to better graphics than provided by NOAA and which, at least as described in the shocking memo seems to be perfectly legitimate.
Meanwhile, to others: If someone here can explain to me precisely what is horrible or embarrassing about this project, please do so. Is the problem that Anthony got the funding? Or that access to temperature data is a bad thing? Or that what? Because I can’t even begin to guess what is supposed to be horrible about this.
The plot thickens:
http://heartland.org/press-releases/2012/02/15/heartland-institute-responds-stolen-and-fake-documents
In terms of moral equivalence, what Heartland is doing is not surprising; seems to be no different than what other advocacy groups do. …
Ahh-but this is exactly the problem. Advocacy is not the same as education. Clearly, the IPCC etc has explicit requirements and should be expected to adhere to them. But, the counter-factual is also not correct: just because Heartland has no such requirements does not excuse them promoting advocacy in the guise of education. Nowhere does the released documents suggest that will occur. On the other hand, the particular perspective and mission of the Heartland Inst. admits a certain skepticism in this regard
When you believe something is right, all information about it is considered education. When you believe something is wrong, all information about it is considered an evil thing. You find out which, later, much later or never.
Not sure what you mean, but I would say the problem is confusing belief with facts and critical thinking. I believe some things that I could not justify discussing in a classroom because it wouldn’t easily communicate either factual content or critical thinking.
The web is loaded with pro-CAGW teaching materials, many federally funded. These are not presenting a balanced view of the facts. The basic fact is that climate science is a great debate. My goal is to communicate that fact, in grade level appropriate scientific detail.
I have never ever seen a balanced view of climate change on any mainstream media program. It is a foregone conclusion. No questions asked. If the mainstream journalists were doing their job they would be skeptics themselves
That (if) current material out there is advocacy is a problem, but obtaining funding for your efforts (however laudible) from Heartland is a potential COI. Clarity and pedagogy is not served by pitting advocacy against advocacy. Maybe you can appreciate how people might imagine that the motivations of Heartland is not to present things in a neutral manner.
I hope you stick to the goals you have stated.
The material from the “greens” borders on hysteria. While it is true that the UEA group were cleared of the charges of scientific misconduct, as far as I can tell those charges did not include the sorts of things that the Heartland Institute is being charged with here (with virtually no evidence). In the case of Climategate, the record was clear: the UEA group did their best to prevent potential dissenters from getting data, and attempted to prevent opposing views from being published. Perhaps not scientific misconduct as so narrowly investigated, but morally repugnant all the same.
Yes, and the fact that the opposing views were used anyway speaks volumes about the awesome power behind the AGW conspiracy.
What opposing views were used anyway and by who(m)?
It is hard to follow generalizations…..
skeptics claim that citations to certain papers were deliberately omitted from the IPCC reports or that papers were rejected.
Baseless assertions often contradicted by what actually happened (eg when the papers in question were cited in the IPCC reports).
Kiddoes, the people, and grudgingly the politicians, want to know how they’ve been fooled. The ongoing clanging ClimateGates tell them.
====================
Hugh,
A bit of history in case you do not remember.
“In a later e-mail, Phil Jones references two other papers he didn’t hold in high esteem. “I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”
Yet, the papers in question made it into the IPCC report, indicating that no restrictions on their incorporation were made. ”
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/global_warming_contrarians/debunking-misinformation-stolen-emails-climategate.html
The two other papers are linked from the cite above.
So Phil Jones to censor some papers, but failed.
Well that’s ok then. As long as evil intentions come to nothing, there is nothing to worry about.
The climate debate is truly a thing of beauty.
It will be hard, perhaps not logistically possible, to count the number of “skeptics” who have pearl-clutched from their fainting couches about the untoward politicization of climate science, who will now line up dutifully to rationalize overt politicization of climate science.
It will be a site to behold, indeed.
So, your argument against skeptics is that a few people have been paid small to medium amounts of money to say the things they were saying in the first place, and using relatively small grants to do actual science (like the temperature-collecting website being built by Watts) while the AGW folks who have been talking about “pure science” while taking in millions apiece (on top of their government wages) are all hunky-dory?
A sight to see, indeed.
Darn them for spending nearly one-third of what James Hansen has taken in for “speaking fees and professional awards.”
My argument against “skeptics” is that selective “concern” about politicization of the science is hypocritical.
It is not a complicated argument.
After reading countless posts of “skeptics” decrying politicization of science, I have yet to see one “skeptics” step up to the plate and denounce this politicization of the science.
Not a single one.
You included.
Joshua | February 15, 2012 at 12:31 am |
“Mommy, mommy, they do it toouuuu.”
Never seen that before.
Joshua,
Your faux charge of hyocrisy is just an elaborate way for you to hijack threads.
Stuff it.
Gary –
Allow me to explain what comprises a “Mommy, mommy” argument.
When one points to poor behavior on the part of another in order to justify their own behavior (or that of someone they’re aligned with), that is Mommymommyism.
I do not rationalize the politicization of the debate on the “realist” side by saying that “skeptics” do so also. Look through all my posts, you will never find me doing that. Nor will you ever find me saying that Mommymommyism is not found among “realists.”
Joshua,
Oftentimes you’re just a low rent, pompous hypocrite. I quoted your exact words posted regarding a comment of mine, which also made no moral equivalence. In fact, I have never engaged in moral equivalence, including in the comment to which you responded. I have not posted anywhere near the thousands of comments you have on this blog, but I have posted more than a few. Feel free to find just one where I did so.
I know what the term is supposed to mean, and I also know how you use it. Maybe in the future you will be more honest in your criticism of others’ comments (though I won’t hold my breath.).
Your reaction here just proves the point I was trying to make. Thanks.
Sorry, Gary –
I thought that when you posted about this “coincidence,”
that you were making some kind of a point. My mistake for not realizing that it was just a random observation.
Anyway, I appreciate that you think that I’m only oftentimes a “a low rent, pompous hypocrite.” At least it isn’t categorical.
Anyway, thanks for reading. It means a lot to me.
Josher, Your characterization that skeptics selective “concern’ about politicization of science is without merit.
Show me one government check written to any skeptic entity and I am willing to change my opinion.
Then we can discuss Solyndra, First Solar, Ener1, GISS, Beacon Power, etc, etc.
But my question to you is, why don’t you care about the environment? Do you realize how many additional recycling plants could be spent with the politicized taxpayer money this administration has wasted on failed green energy? Or do you disagree investing in known green technologies such as recycling, reforestation, waste pump-out stations for the boat cruising community, etc are less important than propping up failed green companies for campaign kick-backs? I would suggest replacing your cynical cap with a compassionalte one before answering – after all, nature is counting on us all, both skeptics and alarmists.
“Your characterization that skeptics selective “concern’ about politicization of science is without merit.”
Every so-called skeptic offers this same absurd lie that is consistent with them all being liars and scoundrels.
Joshua,
There is no such thing as apolitical science. Never has been, never will be. There is only science that neither side gives a crap about.
Marcel would you like to be known as Joshua Jr?
dennis, Marcel is not like Joshua… much more like Robert. Marcel suffers from ‘liars syndrome’, much like Robert used to. Marcel lives in a black and white world, much like Robert does. Not a world that can evaluate the debate from a balanced perspective.
Josh,
Before you get all warmed up on this topic, I thought I’d point out that the one “document” that is the at the heart of your discussion is likely a fake.
You might want to hold fire until you know for a fact that such a program or plans for such a program really exist or if it is just a plant.
tim –
I already allowed for the possibility that there was something that could be legitimately explained about those quotes. They were bizarre.
That doesn’t change the larger truth that Heartland confirmed the authenticity of the other documents, and that those documents confirm an systematic and concerted effort to politicize the climate debate.
You might want to think about that before you join the chorus of “skeptics” who fail to see the hypocrisy of a selective “concern” about politicizing the climate debate.
And tim – you can check on my earlier comments about those quotes for context.
Typically, the dishonest denier scoundrels will avoid like the plague the fact that all but one of the documents is definitely not fake, and that there is nothing in the disputed document that isn’t in the others.
Marcel, don’t bust a blood vessel dude. With the exception of the one allegedly fake document, there is nothing to be denied. Now faking that document, if it was faked, might be a bit inconvenient. Unless of course, the faker was published out of context :)
Marcel,
I recognize that only one of the documents leaked appears to be fake, with the others as legitimate. I believe Heartland has said as much.
Now, can you please point out which of the legitimate documents purport to do what certain people claim, such as an attack on the teaching of science?
PS – my father taught all of his sons the importance of integrity. A coward can easily call someone a liar when shielded by the internet. Would you like to do so to my face?
Joshua: It will be hard, perhaps not logistically possible, to count the number of “skeptics” who have pearl-clutched from their fainting couches about the untoward politicization of climate science, who will now line up dutifully to rationalize overt politicization of climate science.
You should write propositions instead of such inanities as that.
Joshua,
You will again go into hyperbolic overdrive with strawmen and let’s face outright lies on this thread.
Point 1; You can’t see that Heartland is a tiny little PRIVATE free-market advocacy group as compared to all the government swill published at the academic levels and beyond????
That the key document is fake isn’t even going to enter your narrative is it??
You’re a waste of time.
I spoke to the bizarre nature of that one document, consistently, from my first post on this topic, and said that it’s authenticity needed to be proven before conclusions should be drawn.
But thanks for reading. It means a lot to me.
Joshua,
Your faux charge of hyocrisy is just an elaborate way for you to hijack threads.
Stuff it.
//////////
Exactly Hunter.
We are on a short road to Dan Rather “Fake but accurate”. Trust me on this one.
Joshua,
The most entertaining aspect of this is that you actually think people believe you are some sort of unbiased person, above it all.
Please do continue.
hunter –
It is curious that you need to have the same things explained over and over again, even when they are very basic and very simple concepts.
Perhaps tops on the long list of mistaken accusations that you make against me is this one. I have never claimed, suggested, implied, inferred, said, hinted at, asserted, proclaimed or professed to be unbiased.
Not once.
Ever.
I’m glad that you’re amused, and the quality of being able to amuse yourself with your own fantasies must come in quite handy.
No. Firstly, there is no equivalency. A political group fighting to get its side of the story out is not the same as a group pretending to be disinterested researchers, but in fact acting like a political advocacy group.
Secondly, even if they were the same, it still wouldn’t be morally equivalent. The the CAGW priests started the fight by politicizing the issue. It is not morally equivalent for skeptics to fight back. Unilateral disarmament is neither moral nor wise.
Heartland has come out with one interesting comment: “Confidential Memo: 2012 Heartland Climate Strategy,” the one that all of the AGW folks love to quote, is supposedly a fake. The big money quote “two key points that are effective at dissuading teachers from teaching science” is from that document.
Some things in the document do seem a bit off. That “science” quote, for one, and the comment “with funding pledged by the Anonymous Donor” is pretty weird – the common usage would be “funding pledged by an anonymous donor.” May be a less-qualified staffer who wrote it, but it might not.
They admit that most of the documents seem real, but they’re adamant about that one being a fraud.
For David’s sake, I hope it is a fraud, or perhaps explainable by some bizarre kind of typo or inaccurate statement.
I look forward to seeing David provide some documentation of curricula that are even-handed in their presentation of the science.
I suspect that the tribe looking into this from desmog did not
1. do a forensic examination of the files as I did to find any obvious fake.
2. track down the IP of the sender.
3. wait for heartland to comfirm.
So, do you see any difference between the skeptics ( Anthony INSISTED that I get some proof before going public) and the desmog crew?
Also, as soon as it went public all of us involved revealled everything we knew, about timelines, IPs, and yes, we used our public identities.
Finally, as quickly as we could we redacted email addresses and phone numbers.
See any differences in how these were handled?
steven –
If it is all as you say, then those are not insignificant differences. With respect to how the “inconvenient” documents were handled.
That says absolutely nothing about the uniform selectivity of “concern” over politicization of the science.
I’m still waiting to see “skeptics” step to the play to express concern about politicization of the science as revealed in the documents.
Haven’t seen it yet.
It still might happen. But even if it does, it appears that it will be a drop in the bucket.
Kind of puts much of that previous “concern” about politicization of the science in perspective, doesn’t it?
Josh,
I’ve learned it is a waste of time to be “concerned” by something that may not be true.
You are really digging here and all you are going to end up with is a big hole, with you at the bottom.
tim –
Really? Why would I be at the bottom of a hole for pointing out the selectivity of the “concern” about politicization of the science in the climate debate among “skeptics?”
Please explain.
Joshua, my goal is to create what may be the first even handed student/teacher content. The vast majority of available web content for teachers and students, much of it federally funded, is pure CAGW propaganda. Climate change is a controversy and should be taught as such.
David W –
I agree. And I have argued the same view consistently.
I’m wondering if you might discuss the wording of the document that Heartland says is a fake? It was bizarre, to say the least. If it is not a fraudulent document, and the wording can’t be explained in a legitimate way, I think that you will agree it has very troubling implications to the nature of your work. I would hope that you would vehemently denounce the goals it describes, and further contact the Heartland Institute, publicly, to denounce any intentions as described in that document.
Further, I’m wondering if you could provide a link to some of the curricula that you have developed. If you don’t have any such links as of yet, I hope that you’ll provide them in the future.
personally I’ve criticized skeptics for politicizing science. Threatening to take money away is just as political as giving it in the first place. Both sides are pretty blind to this. As a post normal science guy, I dont believe in politically free science. The best you can do is create a traceable open democratic audited process where politics is explicitly on the table and controlled for.
Money changes the questions we ask. not necessarily the answer given.
In any case I think the skeptics would do well to own up to the political aspects of their case. same for both sides.
It is clearly a fake. My goal is to teach the science, not keep it from being taught. That is the CAGW goal, suppress the controversy.
No, “climate change” is not controversial. You are intentionally lying to students to pretend otherwise.
Many of the more subtle and technical aspects of the science are controversial (just as in every other discipline, which is why we have people researching them at all). These are at the level of research-quality questions and are not necessarily for a “K-12 audience,” although interesting questions that are still open for (reasonable) interpretation in climate, astronomy, geology, etc could be discussed accordingly.
Chris Close
Imo it is untruthful to claim that the degree of warming that is due to CO2 is “known” within a reasonably small margin of error. It is also untruthful to claim that we know what the climate will be like (or worse for humans in any particular location) based on the outputs of GCM.
That part of climate change is controversial because some claim to “know” more than the data warrants.
David,
Joshua knows you are not conspiring to end the teaching of science. He is just a liar and thoguht he could hustle you a bit more.
David has stated he is interested in teaching the science. I would like to read the proposed curriculum to evaluate if that is what he is actually putting together. It was interesting how others (Fred Molton) who stated they were teaching the topic to high school students refused to share what was being taught because they feared the criticism of teaching in a biased manner.
steven –
You and I disagree on much. But there is not a smidgen of space between our positions on those comments of yours.
So, you’re all for an audit trail of Donna’s bowl of rotten raspberries? Dig in, there’s sugar and cream on the side for your added pleasure.
============
Chris,
Are you attempting to teach climate science the way you see it only? Why not teach all aspects of climate change? What is it about the alternative that frightens you? Science does not advance by hiding behind ideals, but by putting those theories out for all to test. Or is it that testing of your views that you find frightening?
Chris,
Climate change should be nowhere near a science classroom. It is perhaps a social studies class, but not science.
You teach kids math, chemistry, biology, physics, etc. You do not teach about climate change because that pre-supposes things that are not proven science. What happened to giving students the tools, teaching them the process – I’m sure you remember, observe, hypothesize, collect information and test / question your hypothesis, and let them determine whether or not climate is changing and what, if anything, it might mean. Yet that isn’t how it is being done.
Josh,
Ok, I give. Which document(s) are the ones that show the politization of climate science?
I mean besides the one that is being claimed as a fake?
Seriously Josh, it sure looks like you are a couple of feet further down. But hey, keep digging. It’s your hole.
PS – I meant my original comments as friendly advice. I’m still friendly, but am no longer interested in trying to keep you from looking foolish.
tim –
Chris,
You are only pooping in your sandbox when you accuse David of lying.
You are hardly someone to be held out as honorable, factual or ethical in this dispute.
Josh,
Personally I think you are making too much of the fact that Heartland has either funded some projects of skeptics or paid them some small amount as a reviewer. This goes on all the time and as far as scale goes, Heartland looks pretty small.
I guess I don’t see much merit in the argument that those of us who are skeptical of the policy aspects being driven by the climate change meme should get equally upset on learning that some skeptics have received some support from a policy focused group, such as Heartland. The issue has been political for some time. The fact that the “bible” is / are the IPCC reports proves that point.
I take everything I read or hear with a grain of salt. As sources develop credibility for me, I use less salt. And in evaluating the impact to credibility of learning that Anthony Watts received funding support for a project to better utilize NOAA data verses learning that someone employed by Greenpeace was a lead author on an IPCC report, it is easy for me to know which represents the greater impact.
David –
There are a couple of interesting aspects there.
As I recall, you have stated in the past, explicitly, that you have a very specific interest is in the political dimensions of the debate. As such, your view of what comprises “teach[ing] the science” should be subject to the same scrutiny as anyone else’s view.
Secondly, you should realize that there are many “skeptics” who state, explicitly, that politics should have no role to play in the teaching of the science.
Third, your statement that the “goal” of “CAGW” is to “keep [the science] from being taught is a broad ad hom against thousand upon thousands of science teachers. Disagree with them as you will on how different aspects of the science can be validated, your statement is an overtly political one. The logical implications of that statement are in direct contradiction to your stated goal of taking a balanced approach. Teaching the “controversy,” and “teach[ing] the science,” would explicitly required that you teach the “CAGW” perspective, in full context.
Think about that, David. I’m sure that you can see the inherent contradiction in your statement of goal and your statement of approach.
Amazing. Your ability to twist someone’s words. Simply amazing!
peter –
Why thank you. I aim to please.
And as always, thanks for reading. It means a lot to me.
Peter,
If Joshua is not twisting and deceptively engaging, it is because he is not typing.
Rob,
Many of the central tenants of climate change, which I view as the “big picture” elements appropriate for a high school audience, are well known. Those things include how the greenhouse effect operates, basic elements of radiative transfer, etc. Moreover, there are certain aspects of climate change that have so much support in observation or paleoclimatic inference that pretending that a substantial debate exists would be lying. The students should know that the people who think climate sensitivity is 70 m of sea level rise but that’s not a remote concern this century or even after. They should be taught that the forcing from aerosols are uncertain, so this precludes using observations to constrain sensitivity issues with high confidence.
That message got cut up a bit and makes no sense, sorry.
– Students should be taught that people who think sensitivity is less than 1 C/doubling are in the same sort of minority as people who think HIV does not cause AIDS, and have absolutely no support that has withstood scrutiny, in contrast to the abundant paleoclimatic and other pieces of evidence for a range roughly greater than 2 degrees but with uncertainty. They should not be taught that the cosmic rays theories have as much footing as greenhouse theories. Thus, you could give them a relative sense of the debate.
– I also agree students should not be taught that there are imminent catastrophes awaiting from methane release in the deep ocean a THC shutdown, or complete Antarctic meltdown this century (and should get a sense of the relevant timescales for these feedbacks).
How about fessing up that the catastrophes were fantastical, that the earth may be cooling from natural causes overwhelming any AnthroCO2 effect, that CO2 is plant food and may possibly be the safest geo-engineering we could imagine for the cooling that is inevitably coming for our warm tolerant society?
=============
Chris,
And we might also teach the kids that:
-Like “tobacco-scientists”, most of the scientists peddling the “consensus view” of climate change have, directly or indirectly, vested interests in the “science” in the form of reputation, position, pension, and future funding of their academic and/or business endeavors. And perks, of course, like the IPCC parties discussed below. And that these “neo tobacco-scientists” should be viewed as skeptically as, in an earlier generation, others viewed the “tobacco-scientist” consensus-shills.
-That powerful financial interests both fund and exploit the “climate change” consensus for make-a-buck hustles like the carbon cap-and-trade rip-off and crony-capitalist enterprises like Solyndra that take the tax-payer to the cleaners in the name of carbon-reduction. And of course, the kids should also be taught that none of these carbon scams ever achieve any meaningful reduction in carbon emissions for all their profligate waste.
-That the “climate change” scare stories serve the brave-new-world grand designs of the “green economy” (Google: “wikipedia green economy”). This last to include a history of the Holodomor, re-education camps, boat-people, gulags, killing fields, and Great-Leaps-Forward that were a part-and-parcel of previous, lefty, thinking-big schemes to re-engineer humanity.
-That many of the most prominent promoters of the “consensus” are grotesque examples of carbon-piggery hypocrisy–what with their sprawling mansions, private-jets, carbon-belching Antarctic science-expedition yachts, and jet-set carbon-be-damned lifestyles. And, of course, the kids also need to know that there are, as well, lesser carbon-swine eco-hypocrites who make do, for example, with blow-out, high-carbon swill-slurping (oink! oink! grung-grunt! belch-belch! fahrt-fahrt!) yearly feeding-frenzies at the IPCC’s party-trough as it moves its venue annually from one fun-in-the-sun tourist trap to another–any one of the IPCC’s carbon hog-bonding extravaganzas costing the taxpayer more than the whole of the annual Heartland budget.
And, finally, schools should ban all fossil-fueled vehicles, except emergency and service vehicles and the vehicles of parents, from the school-grounds. And then shut off, year-round, all heating and air-conditioning. You know, so that the teachers can set the example by walking/biking to work and the kids can learn to tough it out in the heat and get a sense of what it is like to negotiate winter without fossil-fuel heat–you know, like those folks literally freezing to death in Eastern Europe, as we speak. Or we might even set it up so that the kids can choose between, let’s say, heat or food. You know, so the kids can get some practice in early for their “green economy” future.
Chris, calling me a liar makes you a fool. We simply disagree and that is what students need to know.
Chris
Imo, you have vastly overstated the consensus on the quality and reliability of the paleoclimate record. You believe that there is a consensus that a doubling of CO2 will result in at least 1C of a temperature increase, and I may believe that is plausible, but there is no consensus on this. Your comparison between that and HIV to AIDS really reduces your credibility as being unbiased.
Students should be taught what is known and can be proven, and taught what still needs to be learned.
Chris, I seriously doubt you “know” what the temperature change will be over the next 15 years as CO2 continues to rise. The rate of CO2 rise is fairly predictable, but thus far the temperature change or the impact on humanity isn’t. Time will provide better data. Let’s teach that.
“You believe that there is a consensus that a doubling of CO2 will result in at least 1C of a temperature increase, and I may believe that is plausible, but there is no consensus on this.”
Yes there is. At least 1C temperature increase. Kids should be taught that is overwhelmingly likely.
mike,
I’d prefer most of our students weren’t the kind that wear tin-foil hats. Thanks for the (completely misguided) conspiracy suggestion of education though.
What paleoclimate inferences? The almost certain fantasy that past sensitivity tells us anything useful about current or future sensitivity?
lolwot/Chris Colose
If you (or anyone else) are going to claim there is a consensus, you need to clearly state amoung whom this reported consensus exists and when. By defination, if there is strong disagreement by a significant portion of a community there is not a consensus. There are clearly many who disagree about the specific rate of warming that can be attributed to AGW.
Claiming something does not make it a fact.
Chris may be referring to the physical property that doubling CO2 in a closed system will result in a 1C temperature rise. That is well established, and could be considered a consensus among scientists. When the same occurs in an open system, like the Earth, a multitude of other influencing factors come into play affecting the end result. There is no consensus among scientists as to what this end result will be. Reports range from near zero, to greater than 5. Although few think that it is less than 1, denigrating them in such a manner is inappropriate.
Chris,
Yr “I’d prefer most of our students weren’t the kind that wear tin-foil hats.”
Ah yes! The first duty of the good-comrade youth-master. Protect the lefty brainwashing of young, impressionable minds from any “tin-foil hat” contamination. Can’t have the kids questioning lefty orthodoxies, motives, ethics, hypocrisies, crimes against humanity or incompetence, right Chris? I mean, let ’em know right up front that such critical thoughts and skeptical inquiries are taboo, “tin-foil hat” modes of thinking.
And then, Chris, I believe the lefty recipe card requires that the good comrade youth-master stroke the not-too-bright kids who toe the party line with unearned, effusive praise, while intellectually bullying those kids with a stubborn tendency to think for themselves (you know, Chris, like calling the “tin-foil hat” trouble-maker kids “tin-foil hat wearers” and the like).
You know, Chris, sometimes I think you’re just too good to be true!
“central tenants”?
don’t worry about teaching science until you pass English 101, dude. jeez.
… we might also teach the kids that … like “tobacco-scientists”, most of the scientists peddling the “consensus view” of climate change have, directly or indirectly, vested interests in the “science” …. and … should be viewed as skeptically as, in an earlier generation, others viewed the “tobacco-scientist” consensus-shills.
Since virtually all “climate scientists” are just government shills. With orders of magnitude more money than anyone else.
cirby,
We’re dealing with people who think “Animal Farm” is a how-to guide book.
I hope Heartland drags it out and gets them to make bigger fools of themselves.
Judith –
Moral equivocation is a nasty business. As I’m sure you will see with further reflection, once you start it is very difficult to stop.
Joshua,
This persistence of pretending you are not engaged in one multi-month long “mommy they do it too”, but claiming everyone you disagree with is almost pathological on your part. It is sad, like watching some badly medicated person having a heated conversation with thin air.
Uh, I was under the impression that these were not “emails” so much as internal documents. Kind of a difference between informal exchanges between individuals and official documents with statements of objectives and funding of the organization.
One difference is that content was taken out of context in the CRU emails, and the documents are presented whole from Heartland. “Hide the decline” became a rallying cry for the D camp, but if you actually read the original article, Dr Mann explains exactly how he constructed the graph; so, it is not clear what some people think was “hidden” by his “trick”. Yes, if you can’t read, you may have come away with a misunderstanding. Was Mann targeting the illiterate when publishing his research paper? Yet, that cry remains in vogue.
Chris,
Since the e-mails have not all been released, you actually do not know the context.
Those that have been studied do not appear to be out of context.
Perhaps you can shed some light on why they are out of context?
Heartland docs appear to have been manipulated and altered and even fabricated.
Do you think “false but true” is a valid term?
Perhaps you can explain why “hide the decline” is a popular phase amongst the skeptics if nothing was actually hidden, in context.
Side note: I see that Dr. Curry has changed the wording of the first line from “emails” from Heartland, to “documents”.
> Perhaps you can explain why “hide the decline” is a popular phase amongst the skeptics if nothing was actually hidden, in context.
“I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.” Phil Jones
Seems our Phil was admitting to something he didn’t do then. And of course nobody doggedly avoided mentioning the divergence issue – the declining proxies – either.
Punksta,
OK, first, Dr. Mann wrote the paper in question, and Dr. Jones made the comment about hiding the decline. So, what is it that you think Dr. Jones is admitting doing?
BTW, the decline in correlation between proxies and measured temperatures (the divergence problem) is also mentioned in the original article. It was also well known by most of the intended audience. So, what are you talking about?
Keith Kloor claims to have gotten a mail from the leaker.
I say raid his house and take his computers.
sorry keith.
heartland clams identity theft. should be interesting.
you are evil Steve, I owe you some pop-corn.
Just kidding, keith is one of the few who held off..good senses. others, not so lucky i fear
Well, at least Keith did his fact checking before posting just like when climategate was leaked :)
Gosh,
I never received a dime for my blog, but if someone whats to fund one of my immense ideas, step forward.
I will do with a little bit what scientists don’t do with a whole lot!
Ecotretas
Ecotretas
Sorry, but I’m first in line for any money from big oil/wind/sol/hydro
If I can have the first 10 million you can then have the next turn
Tonyb
tony b
Hey, wait a minute!
I’m already in line (but have gone dry, so far).
Max
PS At the price of gasoline (petrol to you) today, I’d settle for just one tank full from the sinister “big oil” moguls.
The Heartland Institute has issued an press release stating these documents are fake. They must be taken at their word.
It behoves those who spun their stories around the “originals” to post erratums.
I would expect heartland to contact the police.
in the same way that we had to answer police questions I expect evryone who had contact with the leaker will have to answer questions. What did chris mooney know and when did he know it?
Did they check the authenticity of documents revealling why people were fired? should they? if they didnt and the documents were obtained by identity theft… hmm.
Karma is a b*tch, as they say. Some of these guys may find out just how much of one it can be.
And this affects the atmospheric physics how?
Don’t worry Steve, I’ve already checked, Mooney continues to know nothing.
“The Heartland Institute has issued an press release stating these documents are fake. ”
You’re a liar.
Marcel, you are almost up to your quota of using the word “liar”. They have wonderful threads over at Huffington Post about Global Warming where “liar” is used even more. They are a little short on science tho
For those who don’t understand the above comment: if Heartland states the docs are fake and is found out -i.e. they are real- this will cost them their credibility. I am therefore inclined to take them at their word.
Revkin and his ilk do not have the same credibility to protect: theirs was shot a long time ago and so they can scream whatever they like without damaging it any further.
The whole thing gives a new dimension to the image of the alarmists grasping at straws
“I am therefore inclined to take them at their word. ”
Oh goodie. Because they have stated that all but one of the documents is genuine.
Marcel,
I think Holly is about the same age as you. The two of you can play together. Just make sure there is an adult around to supervise you two.
Not surprising, but now there’s no illusion of what the NIPCC report is about. Some commenters from the sept 1 2011 thread might want to walk back a little….
Dr. Curry, your main concern with the NIPCC was their handling of uncertainty. Do you know feel there are more serious problems with the report?
http://judithcurry.com/2011/09/01/nipcc-discussion-thread/
Let’s remind ourselves that the “ClimateGate” files were contained in a directory named “FOI” at the Climate Research Unit. These were materials that rightly should have been released to the public but were withheld in violation of the law.
The data that came from Heartland was private data that was released through fraud.
There is no moral equivalence.
The mails were not limited to those that would have been covered by an FOI request.
So, obviously, your “concern” about climategate was not that you felt it was an indication of the politicization of science, right?
Josh
As I started to say on the other thread I regard heartland as a minor right wing poorly funded organisation of little consequence to me on this side of the pond. Any documents leaked from them aren’t remotely in the same league as climate gate. No snark, but can you tell me why you are getting so excited about this.
Tonyb
tony –
I have explained it many times. I believe I’ve done so clearly. But once more won’t kill me.
The documents seem to reveal a systematic attempt to politicize the science, with the direct involvement of much heralded scientific “experts.” Heartland is an inherently political organization. (I’ve been thinking about whether there is some objective distinction between an environmental group using political measures to advocate on behalf of protecting the environment, and an inherently political organization using science to advocate on behalf of political goals – I suspect there may very well not be, but in the end, regardless, I see that as relatively immaterial).
In a general sense, I agree with “skeptics” when they speak to the problems of politicizing science. I don’t see politicizing science as a moral failing, and can also see that there is at some level some legitimacy to using science to advance questions that have political ramifications. But along with that legitimacy, I see that politicizing science can certainly be problematic.
I also believe claiming that there can be some absolute division between science and politics is seeking to create a false dichotomy, usually for the sake of political expediency.
All that said, the problem that I have, from either side of the debate, is “concern” about the politicization of science as some ethical principal when it turns out to be flat out selective.
I read from both sides of the debate about how the political advocacy is asymmetrical. Not only do I not see that there is any asymmetry of significance, I also see such arguments as a fallacy of moral equivocation when it involves selective reasoning to make the case.
If someone proclaims the politicization of science to be inherently problematic, then, IMO, it is incumbent on them to hold those they they are aligned with to the same standard.
Joshua
Let’s take your statement to tony b explaining why you have gotten so excited about the alleged leaked Heartland documents and turn it around to cover the Climategate (+ subsequent) revelations, to see if it still fits for you.
The documents seem to reveal a systematic attempt to politicize the science, with the direct involvement of much heralded scientific “experts.”
Heartland[IPCC] is an inherently political organization. (I’ve been thinking about whether there is some objective distinction between an environmental group using political measures to advocate on behalf of protecting the environment, and an inherently political organization [such as IPCC] using science to advocate on behalf of political goals – I suspect there may very well not be, but in the end, regardless, I see that as relatively immaterial).In a general sense, I agree with
“skeptics”[“mainstream consensus believers”] when they speak to the problems of politicizing science. I don’t see politicizing science as a moral failing, and can also see that there is at some level some legitimacy to using science to advance questions that have political ramifications. But along with that legitimacy, I see that politicizing science can certainly be problematic.I also believe
claiming[denying] that therecan[should] besome absolute[a general] division between science and politics is seeking to create a false dichotomy, usually for the sake of political expediency.All that said, the problem that I have, from either side of the debate, is
“concern” about[ignoring the basic corruption that can result from] the politicization of scienceas some ethical principal when it turns out to be flat out selective[when it becomes the justification for falsifying the scientific data to convey a political message].Fits pretty well, right?
Max
max –
I’m not particularly “excited” about the leaked documents. They are BAU for me.
What I find fascinating is the uniformity of the hypocrisy I’ve seen in response from “skeptics.’
I have been looking, and I have yet to see one “skeptic” who will step up to the plate to criticize how the documents show a systematic attempt to politicize climate science. I’m not entirely surprised to see a majority of “skeptics” fail to do so, but I still find it fascinating nonetheless, and I have to admit some surprise that the response (thus far) has been so uniformly hypocritical.
Mosher has stepped up to the plate, but he’s not really what I could call a “skeptic.”
And I will admit to a bit of “excitement” at seeing the argument that not only is politicizing the science to be rationalized, but that the Heartland Institute is to be commended for doing so with great efficiency.
I have to admit, that argument is just spectacular and I loves me some spectacular argument.
“politicization of science”
It’s greenshirt politics for 50 years or more. What alternate universe do you live on Joshua?
You’re strawmen are out in numbers, what a surprise.
Joshua
Your outrage at Heartland for its alleged misdemeanors is either feigned and phony or based upon a high moral sense of right and wrong.
If it is the former, you are a phony.
If it is the latter, you were obviously equally outraged at the “consensus team” for their misdemeanors, which were exposed by Climategate.
Which is it, Joshua?
Max
max –
I’m not outraged in the least. Heartland’s actions are entirely expected. As I have already stated, I don’t find them morally reprehensible.
So there is neither “feigned outrage” nor “moral” judgement on my part.
It’s really amazing how smart people can make the same mistakes over and over, even though they have repeatedly had their errors explained to them.
My focus has been, consistently, on the hypocrisy of “skeptics” w/r/t the politicization of science.
It’s really that simple. Why do you and so many of your fellow “skeptics” have so much difficulty grasping such a simple concept?
It just boggles.
I believe Heartland stated that at least one, but not all the documents were fake.
I wouldn’t be surprised.
The document in question is worded in such a way that it seems just a bit too ‘inconvenient’ for them – too much like a ‘smoking gun’.
I don’t believe they would be that stupid – especially as they know full well how many people are out there looking for the slightest hint of dirt.
Folks should demand to see the original. document properties. should be fun.
I downloaded some of the documents and had a look at the properties.
The “2012-Climate-Strategy.pdf” properties show very little, eg Author: None, Creator: None, quite unlike the other documents.
Yup peter. the fake document has been sanitized.
also, I think it has on of the budget figures wrong.
Are the leaked “Heartland documents” fakes?
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2012/2/15/heartland-says-key-memo-was-fake.html
We will probably know more in a few days.
Will it tell us much, either way, about the scientific basis for rational skepticism of the IPCC “consensus” premise of CAGW?
Hardly.
Will it show purposeful falsification of the “science”, such as”hiding declines”, “non-disappearing glaciers”, etc.?
So far I have seen no such evidence.
But, hey, it’s a good brouhaha that might sell a few copies
Max
I’m only sorry Heartland made the statement so quickly. The hyperbolic/irrational rage of the greens is on full display (Joshua case in point here).
Frankly, I didn’t see much wrong with the concepts of the fake at all. Considering warmer propaganda out spends skeptics 50 to 1 and controls the largest media distribution on top of it (spam for free).
Given that the paper with the controversial quotes is now exposed as a fake, and that Heartland are threatening to pursue those who have published its contents, what we have actually learned from this episode is that absurd Mannian claims regarding “big-oil backed well-funded climate denial movement” (or similar drivel du jour) are exposed as utter deceit.
Heartland’s accounts show that far from being ‘well-funded’ it’s practically penniless, with a mere 2% of the funding of Greenpeace alone, never mind WWF, FoE, Sierra Club, etc.
Net result is yet another shot in the foot for the Big Green Lie Machine. Given the resources at their disposal, you’d think they’d be able to compete if this was all about ‘messaging’, but sadly for them, the truth can’t be bought.
Sayno,
You’re using logic, that has little impact on warming political rationalizations.
On to the “blood for oil” conspiracy theory….and step on it!
Indeed! In fact, one might even speculate that the smoggrifiers just might have decided to cook this up in order to provide a smidgin of “evidence” for Mann to use for his baseless claims while on his self-promotion tour.
The willingness of so many advocacy-churnalists to jump on this “story” (without doing any due diligence) reminds me somewhat of the faux-photography used to discredit Israel.
My guess is that when all the facts are on the table, these self-same churnalists will pretend that they don’t exist – just as they’ve pretended, for example, that Donna Laframboise’s (easily verifiable) exposé of the IPCC does not exist!
But in the meantime, the alarmists may be well on their way to earning themselves the sobriquet of “false alarmists” – and their cheer-leading churnalists will be left with egg on their respective (and less respected by the tweet, if not the day) faces.
With climategate, we found out that the alarmist team was paying off the refs, the scoreboard operators, and the league commissioner, spiking the gatorade of their opponents, and using illegal steroids. Heartland, we found out that their players are trying to win.
Alarmists were totally unconcerned about the cheating and corruption of their team. Now, however, they are dismayed that skeptics are not ashamed that one of the players on their team was trying to win the game within the rules.
Word of advice for alarmist finger-pointers: If you didn’t express the deepest anguish and horror over the climategate e-mails, don’t even bother getting your knickers in a bunch over this. To do so will only beclown yourself.
Now that post earns my nomination for the “Most Ironic Climate Blog Comment of the Week Award.”
I rest my case.
Liars and fools are always resting a case they never made.
Marcel,
You do seem to have a depth of first hand knowledge about fools and liars that could only come from intense personal practice at both.
Joshua,
Tell us what ‘politicizing the science’ means to you, please.
One of the first things we did on the climategate mails was some basic forensics
Of all the documents provided. All but 2 were created on jan 16th around the same time of the day. In the morning. Creator is Joe bast.
1 document was created on 1/25. The directory of the board.
The document that is potentially forged has no document properties.
That is a red flag. desmog should have caught that and noted it.
due diligence boys
steven, get over yourself.
@michael
Thanks for a notably content-free post. Good to know that your standards haven’t changed one iota.
I’m getting this image of David vs. Goliath.
A little advice David, er Michael – next time try using a rock. A soap bubble just doesn’t work.
Lati,
I have to admit, Willard said it better,
“…Please, pretty please with some sugar on it, please deemphasize the impression you leave that you’re the only person in blogland who knows stuff.”
Hey bro
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2012/tell-me-whats-horrible-about-this/
Some hints at who might have written the document.
See, I checked some things. Some things seemed really out of place.
certain words and certain people being mentioned in a strategy document.. and then the scan was done on the west coast..
and then who had copy of heartland 990? why, the same guy
who is mentioned in the document
Steve actually pursues truth and checks facts, something called integrity. The fact you see this as something to “get over” oneself about says a great deal about you and your integrity.
quote”Chris G | February 15, 2012 at 4:03 pm | Reply
One difference is that content was taken out of context in the CRU emails,”
Chris..comments like that might work on a newspaper site.But not here,
Out of context, they were amusing amd bizarre, when you see the time lines..in context..they are a disgrace.That you have not bothered to research this simple fact is interesting.
“Hide the decline” became a rallying cry for the D camp, but if you actually read the original article, Dr Mann explains exactly how he constructed the graph; so, it is not clear what some people think was “hidden” by his “trick”.
Your doing it again.
Please read a little before coming here and posting meme`s that were discredited ages ago thoroughly.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BQpciw8suk
https://www.google.com/bookmarks/url?url=http://bishophill.squarespace.com/storage/A%2520good%2520trick%2520to%2520create%2520a%2520decline.pdf&ei=jCo8T-HCMciviQfC95nfCg&sig2=I6YyPBK7f_agBj_Lv0kfkg&ct=b
http://climateaudit.org/2011/12/01/hide-the-decline-plus/#more-15073
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2011/11/26/456-5/#more-12663
You haven’t read Mann, et al 1998; have you?
Do you even know what an eigenvector is?
Other than that, I agree that the hide-the-decline meme was discredited ages ago.
TonyB wrote to Josh: “No snark, but can you tell me why you are getting so excited about this?”
Because Tony, he has nothing else. ANd he’s frustrated. They all are. This has been a very bad year for warmists on just about every level. The attempt to equate this to climate-gate is absurd on its face….and a sign of desperation.
Up thread someone asked: “The more interesting question to me is how have these groups been so effective with so little funds, relative to the much larger expenditures by the green groups.”
Simple:
It takes less money to spread truth than to spread lies.
Thanks
JK
+10
So the warmists are hysterical at the shock/horror discovery that the evil Heartland has an annual budget of $6.5m (c.f. Greenpeace’s measly $310m) and the temerity to actually fund people who share its views. This absurd fear of a tiny, ill-funded organisation illustrates perfectly the warmists’ lack of confidence in the validity of their claims and uncertainty about the real strength of their position.
And as Heartland is, I believe, the only body of any significance promoting CAGW scepticism, this disclosure torpedoes all those assertions about “a well-funded, highly organised denial machine”. Is Big Oil asleep – where’s the massive funding?
It also illustrates, as Jo Nova says here: http://joannenova.com.au/2012/02/logic-gate-the-smog-blog-exposes-irrational-rage-innumeracy-and-heartlands-efficient-success/, “that the Heartland Institute punches far above its weight with an incredibly efficient budget”.
Now I have to admit, this is a fantastic wrinkle.
So here we find not only hypocritical defense of the politicization of the climate debate, we also find “skeptics” saying that Heartland should be commended for politicizing the debate more efficiently.
What’s that Woody Allen joke? Oh, here it is.
Ya’ just gotta love the climate debate.
This is absolutely spectacular.
Well with most of the punching on the skeptical side being volunteer, you know the pros would have to be efficient. For extra credit, compare and contrast with the consensus side.
==============
Hi Robin
Very good analysis of this “David and Goliath” story. [He didn’t know it at the time, but Goliath would have had good reasons to fear David.]
In this case we will probably see soon whether or not the documents are fake or not, but (in either case) this “tempest in a teapot” appears to be a desperate attempt to discredit a tiny, ill-funded group that – despite its small size and marginal funding – has become a nuisance, even a threat.
But in the end this whole exercise may get Heartland more public sympathy and more funding, so could end up being another self-inflicted “shot in the foot” for the “mainstream consensus” group.
Max
It’ll be difficult for our favourite Hockey Sticker to continue his guff about well-funded Big Oil Denial Machine now that we can all see that their funding is pretty small.
Unless of course there are ‘other even more shadowy organisations lurking in the shadows spreading their tentacles widely through the blogosphere and having influence beyond their apparent size’
We could call them ‘The Bogeymen’.
Does anyone have their address as I’d like to apply for funding from them. Or do I just write to ‘The Bogeymen’, Denierland, America?
All the effort I put in here and elsewhere I deserve just a little financial reward as well as the intellectual joys alone. Mind you I bet all the dosh goes to whoever they pay to produce those hilarious satires by ‘Martha’. And that poor bastard who pretends to be ‘Joshua’. It must be hard trying to keep the consistent level of tedious outraged irrelevance going day after day. And he’s got the deep seated worry that nobody’s reading it off splendidly. When he finishes his run as ‘Joshua’ he’s good enough to go up to the West End or Broadway… he deserves every penny…………………..
I’m waiting for Desmogblog and Skepticalscience to assert the Dan Rather defense. It doesn’t matter that the faked document was forged. We already knew the story was true anyway.
How many blogs would even have discussed this issue if not for the forged document?
Oh, and the provenance of that document will prove interesting. I have seen lots of talk about defamation over the last couple years, but it’s hard to prove that opinion is false. Now a faked document, that would make it a piece of cake to prove malice.
Yup !
send in the cops. take desmog computers.
tallbloke must be laughing
I commented on Joe Romm’s blog asking if it was no longer considered to be good journalis, practice to confirm one’s sources before going public. Never got posted. Might have been my closing sentence – where I asked if he attended school with Dan Rather.
A follow up comment asking if he was going to post an update indicating that HI had stated the document his post centered on was a fake also never made it.
So much for a first time experience at his site.
This has the potential to blow up in the face of whoever forged that document, with enough derision to go around for those dumb enough to accept it as gospel, including some commenters on this blog.
Have I missed something really important, or am I right in thinking that this is a storm in a teacup?
A quick glance at the documents shows that – with one exception – they are all pretty mundane stuff. And the exception is a fake…and not a very good one at that. The style and presentation is so clearly an order of magnitude less professional than the other documents as to stand out.
So I guess the only interesting questions are who was the faker, why did they do it, and did they really think that they would get away with it?
I’m sure that all those who have expressed outrage at its contents will be delighted to let their readership know that it was a false alarm and that there really isn’t anything to get excited about……
Latimer
Storm in a tea cup? More like an egg cup.
Have I missed something and Heartland are actually far more important and influential than I have previously believed them to be?
tonyb
tony –
You asked for an explanation and I provided one.
http://judithcurry.com/2012/02/15/heartland/#comment-169485
I would appreciate a response.
@climatereason
Hi Tony
‘Have I missed something and Heartland are actually far more important and influential than I have previously believed them to be?’
My favourite uber greenie and local Transition Town Head Honcho is terrified of both Heartland and the Koch Brothers – of whom I have hardly ever heard. He is genuinely convinced that all sceptics are amply rewarded each month by these guys and it is only their filthy lucre that stops us from joining his movement with enthusiasm.
So, yes, they do have great influence. Just not in the way we imagine.
PS : I didn’t get my cheque this month. Was yours OK? :-)
At the risk of being repetitive, the ClimateGates explained how the consensus science came to be wrong. These documents don’t show how the skeptics of the consensus are wrong.
Vive la difference.
==========
Joshua
I’m just off to bed so hope this will suffice. You say;
‘All that said, the problem that I have, from either side of the debate, is “concern” about the politicization of science as some ethical principal when it turns out to be flat out selective. ‘
Its a fact of life that climate science has been politicised. It happened years ago and the genie can’t be put back in the bottle. I’d rather science of any description is pure and objective and leads wherever it may.That especially applies to climate science because of its potential impact on everyones lives.
Sorry, but I can’t raise any enthusiasm for this story, probably because Heartland isn’t on my radar. ‘Poorly funded right wing think tank barely funds climate sceptics’ is hardly the story of the year..
tonyb
When I began following this whole issue, what struck me most was that the skeptics repeatedly pointed out how the establishment was wrong on the science but the establishment always focused on personalities and ad hom attacks. It is as true today as it was 3 years ago
Only $6.5 million? This is pettifogging small change for Greenpeace.
> David Wojick […] does not come across as a propagandist.
Uncertainty bars needed.
David has stated an explicit focus on the political dimensions of the debate, and a very strong political ideology. He has spoken of extensive experience working directly with a number of politicians.
One has to wonder what are Judith’s scientific criteria for evaluation who is, or isn’t, a propagandist.
Judy’s entitled to her opinion, even if it’s not one of a scientist.
And perhaps she made this comment solely on her own behalf.
But the statement was made in a more general mode than that.
And as such, it deserves due diligence.
Yup.
He doesnt come across as one.He may be one, but he doesnt come across as one. I think he is a propaganist, but he doesnt come across as one. Why is english so hard for you to understand
What’s a “propaganist?” Why is English so hard for you to type, and punctuate?
steven –
Like Inhofe, miraculously, his basket of bread’s become roses.
===================
I disagree with steven on much, but I do agree with him about spelling and grammar nannies.
He meant ‘propagainist’, you know gaining by giving props. And uptwinkles. Would someone please pass Pythy the Feather?
===============
Joshua,
it’s pretty simple. I try very hard not to read into a text especially
when it uses words that back away from sure meanings. If we she
wanted people to believe that he wasnt a propaganist, she knows how to
say that in the language. So she made linguistic choices that leave
wiggle room. I am hyper sensitive to linguistic choices that imply
uncertainties. Since I cant know her mind I choose to preserve the
wiggle room. In my mind its uncertain whether she thought he was
a propaganist, or thinks he is one now, or what. What her text says
is what her text says. he doesnt come across as one. You come across as an idiot, but you’re not.
Perhaps Judith believes so, but that is far from obvious to me, let alone certain. So I expressed my disagreement.
Why are e-salon discussions so hard for you to follow, Mosphit?
Why this tasteless punctuation?
We could play the Quoting Game if you want. I have all the time in the world. Besides, you could then even have the nerve to blame me for diverting topic, an absurd accusation, if you ask me. (Hint: it takes two to tango.)
PS: You were not completely right about the marginalia , by the way: in our actual case, quoting expert uses matter more than proponents of parsomatics might presume. That Brandon reopens this can of worm in #89583 in his own pompous ways (as if there were a way to determine what IS a bot) and the follow-up on #89584, is the main ingredient to parsomatics, which proves to me that tt’s easier to nail jello into the wall. And your recursivity criteria does not work, by the way. (Hint: wget.) Trying to define what an agent is leads nowhere crisp and clean: if you’re truly the holist you claim to be, you should know that.
But I can understand why you think that I cause diversion, and I appreciate enough the aforementioned thought to write this post-scriptum, but I would appreciate if you let me disagree with you on that one. That’s mostly the figment of your mindframing, to put it bluntly. But thank you for you showing humanity once in a while, even in these lukewarm times for introspection, and for your overall interest toward my persona. Please, pretty please with some sugar on it, please deemphasize the impression you leave that you’re the only person in blogland who knows stuff.
And to leave you with a point of agreement, I will say that I agree with you when you say that people should do this kind of job for free and accept money for no one. I’m sure every institutes of parsomatics will do the same soon…
Only the most deeply intellectually dishonest person would claim that David Wojick doesn’t come across as a propagandist.
The best ones don’t…….David does.
Willard, moshe’s light is hidden under a barrel. He’s such a great lukewarmer he’s been restricted to that domain, with excursions. Such a warm fuzzy meme. Why it should even need his help I fail to understand, but there it is, and so it is directed.
=======================
Dear Kim,
Let’s look at Moshpit’s rephrasing:
> He doesnt come across as one.
Let’s cut distancing and replace the pronouns:
David may not come across as a propagandist.
Let’s cut some more distancing and
add to whom that belief applies:
David may not come across as a propagandist to Moshpit.
David may come across as a propagandist to Michael.
David may come across as a propagandist to Marcel.
Yes, let’s keep the modalities on the table.
Just another red herring from Moshpit
which has been responded before
he voiced it:
http://judithcurry.com/2012/02/15/heartland/#comment-169525
Language is a social art.
Hey,
Marcel figured out another way to say liar. Smart lad, our Marcel.
> Only the most deeply intellectually dishonest person would claim that David Wojick doesn’t come across as a propagandist.
I disagree: only a person that seeks the right leverage would.
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2012/tell-me-whats-horrible-about-this/
uncertainty bars needed
Joshua,
This subthread discusses this quote from the blog post:
> David Wojick […] does not come across as a propagandist.
Please read the link injected into this subthread by Moshpit.
See if that relates to David Wojick’s pedagogical research or editorial practices in general.
That should help you spot the right leverages.
Study that example and those offered in this week’s hurly burly if what you want is to honestly broker discussions.
Maybe we should be crediting Heartland with a “blinder well played”.
Surreptitiously deliver to your opponent actual internal documents which show the comparative paucity of resources being spent in holding your opponent to arguably no worse than a draw. Include a fake, but supposedly damning document for your opponent to drool over. You then admit to the legitimate documents, while pointing out the document they are drooling over is fake due to being the only one without an author.
Sounds to me like it should be a money raiser for your side. Meanwhile donors to your opponent are thinking. WTF. All the money I’ve donated to these clowns has evidently been pissed away if they can’t do better than achieve a draw against an organization with so few resources. I think I’ll find better things to donate to.
Pretty efficient, eh?
============
Bob,
It sounds like you are reading “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, or hanging out some truther site again.
Please don’t tell me there’s a case of ‘motivated reasoning’ on the loose at the Heartland Institute. Quick, wall it off, can’t have any of that around here.
================
If people start looking at not only where the money comes from but also the amounts involved I would imagine the warmists are not going to come out of this looking good. Skeptical funding versus warmist, I know who I’d rather have bank rolling me! Let’s all not forget how much funding the warmists are coining from big ole oil and gas recently, then add in the tax dollars. It is, as others have noted, just amazing how much has been done with so little by the skeptics.
“It is, as others have noted, just amazing how much has been done with so little by the skeptics.”
Yes take for example NASA which sent vast mounts of money getting man to the moon and then compare that with the small amount of money it took some people to make a movie that convinced lots of people that man never landed on the moon.
Conspiracy theorists don’t need money. They just need a platform to spread their misinformation.
The money being spent by the likes of the Heartland Institute is on top of an already self-serving bubble and is largely superfluous. Donors are effectively wasting their money in my opinion.
For example over $1.5 million spent on the NIPCC report. The lead author, is noted as being paid **$11,600 a month**. Do you really think the NIPCC report is worth that amount for the near zero impact it’s had?
Watt’s looks like he’ll get $88,000 to produce a website that visualizes data of non-importance gathered and supplied by others. I could do that for less than $1000 and it would matter just as less. You know I don’t even see the *point* of such a website let alone what “skeptic” spin it’s supposed to have. If I were a Heartland donor I might want to know what I am getting for my $88,000.
You got to understand your audience, they are happy with cheap reports full of errors. They are happy with made up authorities from Russia saying that “it’s all a scam”. I have to assume the donors don’t care/understand how little impact their money is having.
So now we wait for the reactions of those guardians against the politicization of science, and the telling of lies to discredit one’s political opponents – to the forgery and publication of a document designed to destroy the reputations of, and spread lies about, the Heartland Institute and David Wojik.
Oh the eloquence we shall read…the moral outrage…or is that the sound of crickets…?
In the first place, I want to congratulate our own David Wojick for acquiring a $100,000 per year contract from Heartland for developing climate science teaching modules. David – your stated goal is to develop content that is accurate, objective, and free from propagandizing. It’s a commendable goal and deserves to be accomplished.
As you know, this has been a subject of some interest to me. I have been giving climate change talks – to the general public, to college audiences, to science teachers, and also to high school students, and so I’ve gained some experience in working toward your goals.
I wonder whether you would consider subcontracting to me some of the Heartland funding you will be earning so that I can generate teaching modules with the accuracy and objectivity that is needed. To fit adequate content into a 50-minute class is a difficult challenge that I’ve begun to address. It’s necessary to describe the nature of the climate system, the “greenhouse” warming effect of CO2, the role of other climate variables, natural and anthropogenic, and potential impacts on sea level, temperature variation and extremes, precipitation variation and extremes, agricultural productivity, human health, biodiversity and species extinction rates. The potential importance of ocean acidification must also be mentioned, and uncertainties regarding the magnitude and pace of all impacts should be acknowledged. Finally, it will be important to emphasize that decisions on how to address climate change consequences are sociopolitical and outside the realm of science. To date, my efforts in this area have been well received by students and teachers.
Given my experience, I expect that I may be able to help in creating objective and accurate content appropriate to classroom teaching at the high school or middle school level. If you are interested, I’ll be happy to work out further details with you in furthering this worthwhile endeavor. It’s hard to think of anything more needed in these contentious times than accuracy and objectivity in addressing climate change issues.
that won’t do Fred. Apparently you need to tell them CO2 is life and nature emits more than 20 times as much CO2 as humans.
Don’t mention that the human emission dominates the sharp rise in CO2 level…
The former are facts but the latter is controversial, in fact is has been debated here at length. It will certainly be included.
Fred –
I’m guessing that I detect a slight tone of sarcasm in that comment – but it would be nice to see David offer to pay you to work with him on creating a curriculum (rather than him just subcontracting you to work separately).
Please keep in mind, however, that you may not be the best candidate, as David has said in the past that he has an explicit interest and focus on the political dimensions of the debate, and I haven’t seen you express a similar focus or interest. I’d think that an ideal candidate would have a similar degree of political orientation (from the other side) to balance out his orientation. However, if you are similarly oriented to the political dimensions of the debate, I think that you would be a very good choice and that you and David might have a good shot at creating a well-balanced curriculum (assuming that you could actually reach consensus on any aspect of the science).
Joshua – Climate change is a subject I know something about, teaching it is something I’m beginning to know something about, the difference between objective content and propaganda is something I know something about, and I could always use the money.
So Fred, what’s your lesson plan for perceiving, understanding, and transcending ‘confirmation bias’?
===================
Kim – The best way for you to judge that is to attend one of my talks. If you’re interested, I can let you know when and where the next one will be.
Thanks, but you display your lesson plan here daily. You’ve already taught me most of what you can.
===========================
:fred m
Try a lot less waffle, much more focussed content and 50 mins will be within your grasp.
And not every sentence has to include reference to the first person singular
No, Fred, David’s not the funder. You need to submit your proposal to dem’s wid de gold, just as David did. There is an burgeoning demand for reliable education in climate science. Go for it.
==================
How does any high school in the US allow Fred to teach his views on climate change? That would seem to meet the definition of propaganda being taught in schools.
Rob -Does that mean that if I put in a proposal to Heartland for funding, you won’t put in a good word with them on my behalf?
Fred
It means the same thing for you as it does for David. What is being taught needs to be reviewed to ensure it is teach facts and not opinions or propaganda. Imo, there are inaccuracies being claimed from the cAGW crowd and by those skeptical of cAGW.
I believe that you are dishonest regarding your knowledge of the issue overall, and in your teaching.
Rob,
I’d want to hear him before saying Fred pushes propaganda.
Fred, do you get to the PNW at all?
Fred
I again challenge you to post a link to what you have taught to students. Are you afraid of being proven to be teaching a highly baised view on the topic?
Rob – the best thing would be for you to attend one of my talks to the general public (or to college audiences with additional public attendance). If you want to do that, I can alert you to the time and place for the next one.
It’s always interesting to see peoples view of reality. With very few exceptions, Fred is probably one of the most consistently accurate posters here, and one of the most literate in the science of climate. He is well acquainted with both textbook-concepts as well as the academic literature. If it were up to other people, we’d essentially be teaching students “blog science” (i.e., 95% of which are people’s pet theories they strung together without knowing the subject, based on what sorta makes sense to them).
Perhaps it would be worth having a discussion, not on what you’d teach the students, but from what materials you’d present that information from.
Fred, if your ever in CT I would come to see your talk…. how can you let me know?
John – Thanks for your gracious comment. My invitation to you or anyone else is sincere, but it was also made with the certainty that neither Rob Starkey nor Kim would have any intention of attending.
If there is some way to contact you (e.g., via email), I will be delighted to let you know about future talks. To date, I haven’t traveled very far from southwestern Pennsylvania, but if a CT venue comes up, I would not only welcome your presence but also your reaction.
My responses to Kim and Rob were more along the lines of sparring than made with serious intent (although I would welcome their attendance). To continue sparring would become tiresome, so I’ll desist, but I’ll try to respond on a serious basis to any further comments from anyone. I do think climate teaching is important, and I absolutely believe in the need for accuracy, objectivity, and comprehensiveness. It’s a huge challenge, and there’s always a way to do it better than it’s been done so far.
Fred
That is an obviously disingenuous offer. So why won’t you post what you are teaching?
John – to add to the above, you supply contact information to me privately via my own email – see the denizens page for information on that.
Poor Fred the Cynic. I’d actually love to listen to Fred speak, and wondered if Judy would advertise one of his talks. It’s a poor idea for me to go, though, ‘cuz I act up in public.
And Fred, you’ve said it all here. But I’d be interested in the vocal cant of a true believer. Your rhythm may well be hypnotic, as well as self-hypnotic, and I’m curious.
=====================
It wasn’t even so disingenuous as it was sparring with the 97 lb weakling’s haymaker. C’mon, show us your stuff, Fred. Oh, you have.
=====================
Kim sez…
” ‘cuz I act up in public.”
LOL. Me too! Maybe we could form a team and give ’em hell! Maybe get thrown out of a few places! You could be the poet, and I’ll throw the rotten tomatoes.
Why won’t Fred Moolten post his data and code? What does Fred Moolten have to hide?
Easy, Ps&Qs, he’s hiding his confirmation bias from himself. Everyone in Flatland points it out.
==========
Like someone else said, there is sarcasm in your post.
So Fred wants to teach young people about climate science? No one should have taken any of your scientific mutterings seriously since you demonstrated that you do not even understand the basic principals of climate science since your responses in this thread;
http://judithcurry.com/2012/01/10/nonequilibrium-thermodynamics-and-maximum-entropy-production-in-the-earth-system/#comment-157846
You completely failed to recognize that the second law was not even part of present climate science, or even showed a basic understanding of the second law itself! It took Judith two or three times to point it out to you.
All of your posts contain sentences such as
“It’s necessary to describe the nature of the climate system, the “greenhouse” warming effect of CO2, the role of other climate variables, natural and anthropogenic, and potential impacts on sea level, temperature variation and extremes, precipitation variation and extremes, agricultural productivity, human health, biodiversity and species extinction rates.”
where you never actually say anything specific, or state a straightforward scientific fact or observation. Just rambling generalizations that most people on this blog or maybe even a junior high school student could make.
You have a delusional view of yourself.
Thanks Fred, but I am not trying to teach climate science, just the debate. I note that your definition of climate science appears to be CAGW, with a focus on adverse impacts. This is precisely the basis for my project. CAGW is not the same as climate science. It is both more, speculative threats, and less, ignoring uncertainties. Your teaching is the problem I seek to correct.
David – I view the term CAGW as an ideological mischaracterization designed to discredit current climate science and its main findings. It’s an epithet coined by partisan warriors, and has no more place in true scientific discourse than the term deniers – an equally partisan characterization. I don’t teach CAGW.
I do tell audiences something about climate science principles underlying climate change. To do that has required me to learn something about the science, and if you want to engage in teaching on this subject, I hope you’ll try to do the same.
Fred, I am sure you do. Hence my project. You do not own the science. That is my teaching.
I view the term CAGW as an ideological mischaracterization designed to discredit current climate science and its main findings. It’s an epithet coined by partisan warriors
This gets it exactly back-to-front. The people preaching CAGW are by-and-large government shills, partisan warriors mischaracterizing themselves as climate scientists so as to entrench their ideological project of deception.
How else do you explain the systemic, unrepentant dishonesty and secrecy that characterizes the CAGW ‘consensus’ ?
David,
You describe the problem well. Fred’s response is rather sad in its misleading attempt to ignore the problems of CAGW.
Kindly point me to the CAGW papers David Wojick refers to. I keep seeing them mentioned but citations seem to be somewhat nonexistent.
Funny. Blogging things for free, Heartland would have paid otherwise ;-)
This notion of comparing Heartland’s budget to environmental organizations is an apples-to-oranges comparison. Greenpeace and WWF embrace a lot of different activities and I am sure the amount they spent on climate change related activities is but one part on what they spend on other campaigns. If we want to talk about the effectiveness of different organizations’ spending to influence climate policy, we could look at these organizations’ annual reports (they are accessed in seconds on their websites) and compare the portions of their budgets they spend on climate change related activities and that might be informative.
But I think the most important takeaway from the exposure of these documents is the way that Heartland’s game plan mirrors the game plan of past industry-funded efforts to shape public opinion. The immediate one that comes to mind is second-hand smoking, where Heartland received a lot of funding from Phillip Morris and the like to question the science on second-hand tobacco smoke and spent it on similar activities — funding “experts” to tell a certain message, holding conferences, trying to influence the media, etc. There is something that seems very conspiratorial about it.
I think environmental advocacy groups are very public about their activities to increase awareness of climate change. Go to the Greenpeace website if you want and see what they say about climate– they aren’t exactly keeping any secrets. But Heartland is very secretive about its activities, I suspect because the funding source is industry. How much of Heartland’s work is funded by oil and coal companies or individuals in the oil and coal business? I suspect we will learn shortly.
As a final thought I don’t understand why there are comparisons to the IPCC here. The IPCC is a scientific committee chartered with producing reports to inform governments and answers to those very governments, acting through the UN. Heartland’s goal is to influence public opinion and government policy and answers to private and corporate donors. There are vast differences between the way these organizations operate and what their goals are. I find the notion that one could conflate the two into different “sides” of an issue to be a scary one, because that either means you think the IPCC is an advocacy group, which it is not, or you believe Heartland is a scientific advisory panel, which it is not.
Peter,
Aside from the grassy knoll Joshua ranting on this comment is a piece of work. Of course the IPCC is advocating a nebulus “consensus” that they have been steering befoe they were formally formed. Go research Dr. Lindzen’s accounts of the events.
They a thousand times worse than the NY Times in deceit. That’s pretty low if you can’t figure it out. Heartland is in fact a diverse free-market think tank as well. The whole budget isn’t going toward fighting climate fraud and abuse at all.
A document (the key one) is forged and you expect an investigation of Heartland which isn’t government funded? How many Red Herring can you fit on the head of pin?
There is a consensus. All scientific academies. It’s not just the IPCC. That’s because the evidence is convincing. You are just shooting the messenger.
The likes of the Heartland Institute, GWPF, SPPI, etc are comparable to attempts to distort the science that the tobacco companies did.
Cigarette tar causes lung cancer, but Anthro CO2 doesn’t cause Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming. Rather, it is a tonic to the general health of the biosphere, a weakly warming blanket against the awesome chill in our future, and the energy co-produced with the CO2 is the lifeblood of our human culture.
Oreskes is so 20th Century, and Malthus is practically medieval.
===================
Let me rewrite your sentence a little:
“Cigarette tar doesn’t cause lung cancer. Rather, it is a tonic to the general health of the body.”
See what I mean now?
Naw, tonic to the nervous system, at least the nicotine in it. The tar is pretty devastating to many of the rest of the systems. Try another analogy. I’m sure you’ll find one. Meanwhile, CO2 is plant food.
=========
I don’t think you understand the analogy. I am saying your statements claiming CO2 rise is safe are analogously misguided as claims decades ago that smoking was safe.
First of all you don’t know that rising CO2 will be a tonic. Second it goes against the weight of scientific evidence.
Is there a smoking equivalent of Godwins Law in climate debates?
If so, please remember that, in addition to passive or secondary smoking risks, we now have tertiary smoking (smoking ouside but bringing dreaded and fatal smoke particles inside attached to your clothing) and quaternary smoking (the addition of tobacco pollution to general air pollution, rendering it far more harmful – see
http://nextbigfuture.com/2012/02/air-pollution-in-cigarettes-per-year.html
If Holdren and Ehrlich were really serious about wanting to reduce the human population, they should be on 5 packs a day. :-)
Higher CO2 and a warmer earth will support more life and increase biological diversity. Mmmm, mmmm, tonic.
==============
Over the longterm – millions of years – maybe.
But if temperature and CO2 are both changed very suddenly don’t you think the sudden change is more likely to reduce biological diversity? New species aren’t going to appear in just 100 years. But a big change to regional environments can sure wipe out a lot of species that fast.
You clearly haven’t given this subject a lot of thought. Like most skeptics.
Decent questions, which I have, in fact, thought about. I think the temperature of the earth changes naturally and that the temperature effect of CO2 pales in comparison, but what little it is is to the good side, and you agree that warmer is better than colder. I don’t think we can liberate enough CO2 to impact the disappearance of species by the atmospheric or oceanic concentration alone, but we’ll certainly enable new ones to arise as it warms and as CO2 concentration rises.
====================
lolwot,
What scientific evidence? Models are not scientific evidence. I have yet to see any actual evidence that a warmer planet is going to be devestating to those inhabiting it.
“This notion of comparing Heartland’s budget to environmental organizations is an apples-to-oranges comparison. Greenpeace and WWF embrace a lot of different activities and I am sure the amount they spent on climate change related activities is but one part on what they spend on other campaigns.”
You might note that climate change is a tiny part of Heartland’s activities, too. While their “Center on Climate and Environmental Policy” handles AGW and other environmental issues, they also deal with government spending, education, free speech rights, health care, legal, and communications. The amount of money Greenpeace spends on global warming looks to be about the total size of Heartland’s total budget. Even their actions that aren’t (supposedly) aimed at AGW tend to have “global warming” tacked on somewhere.
When you look at the Greenpeace web site, they have a nice little collection of RSS feeds. Of the 66 total categories, 26 are dedicated to stories about global warming.
Peter,
Look at what the NGO’s on your side actually spend money on and get back to us on that, OK?
As to the IPCC, they spend tremendous effort to influence public opinion and don’t kid yourself otherwise.
Doubtless they’ll soon find that simply knowing someone who was once married to someone whose grandfather once smoked a cigarette, increases your risk of lung cancer by 0.02% (P < 0.5)
That might seem ridiculous, but where do you go once you've already jumped the shark?
Heh. If the document claimed to be a forgery is proved to be such, then this will end up being climategate 2.5 (with 3.0 still waiting in the wings).
One last fascinating observation for the evening.
I have been accused of making assumptions about the authenticity of the one document that Heartland says is fake.
I haven’t, in fact, ever done that.
However, there has been a widespread assumption that Heartland’s assertion that the document is fake should be taken at face value, without any verification.
And this is being done by people who self-describe as skeptics.
You just gotta love the climate debate. It never fails to be absolutely fascinating.
Is that all ya got?????? Phew…….
If you bothered to interest yourself in the science you wouldn’t be so awe-struck at the the little furballs of fascination that you find in the rhetoric. The evolution of the science before our eyes is fascinating. Go see an eye specialist.
============
I’ll agree with the evolution part and that it’s fascinating, I don’t need an eye specialist to tell me that the science, rather than evolving, devolving, it that’s a word. It seems like there have been lot’s of hasty comments before clarity has been reached. I will wait for that. The fact that I’m on this site would seem to evidence my interests.
oh, Kent, I was talking to Joshua, but I so rarely do I can understand your misperception.
I particularly liked your response to Joshua. Whew, that is all he’s got. Verbiage. A cornucopia.
===========
That was nice :)
kim,
less a cornucopia than the blog equivalent of hoarder’s collection of useless redundant stuff…..
I’m fine with even the faked page included.
The lemming factor here Joshua is you can’t apply a standard to a tax-payer funded (leech) culture and a privately funded one.
Care to take a stab at that?
Again, you’re a board baffoon and many realize it and will tell you so. Then again Dr. Curry ignored the obvious in her statement as well and I will be getting ripped to shreads shortly for attacking the host for the same posture you maintain. Anyone with a brain care to explain the paradox?
The ho-ha over the fake is a joke in itself Joshua, it appears that both you and Dr. Curry need a lesson in the Constituition and the rights of PRIVATE parties and the responsibility of those living on the public dime who are imagined (and expected) to be OBJECTIVE scientists which clearly they are not.
There is a serious moral deficit in your thinking Joshua and more sadly Dr. Curry’s unless she owns up to this point.
with the climategate mails I assumed fake until proven real by CRU’s admission
Joshua said, “However, there has been a widespread assumption that Heartland’s assertion that the document is fake should be taken at face value, without any verification.”
Those skeptics should be tarred and feathered! REAL skeptics looked at the time stamps and wording before agreeing with the Heartland assertion that the document was fake.
Why would someone add a fake document to such a treasure trove of damning evidence that the Heartland Institute has an agenda?
It is understandable that the media would jump on the chance to discredit the Heartland Institute and not science for taking novel shortcuts because of the political will of the media or is it really news?
I would think that science purists would have been equally offended by both the climate emails and the Heartland emails.
Oh, Joshua, the Heartland agenda seems to be limiting government regulation based on questionable science and obtuse interpretation of science. I tend to agree with them. I am putting together information to fight a seat belt violation I received 30 yards from my front door in a residential area traveling at about 20 MPH. That is my second. My first was about 30 yards from a K-Mart parking lot turning on to a 25 MPH road into another residential area. Speed kills, you know, so I will probably be unpopular challenging a law that protects so many residential neighborhood drivers.
They are coming for your bacon Bubba :)
Cap’n –
Really? I thought that Heartland is an overtly political organization that has hired an overtly politically-oriented non-educator to develop materials for educating children on climate science, in a way that he says will not contain information on the viewpoints held by the majority of climate scientists (because he says that those views are not “climate science”).
How could i have been so wrong?
cap’n
It is unfortunate, indeed, that you won’t be joined in your protest by that motorcyclist who died from a motorcycle accident head injury sustained when he was driving to a protest of laws that require motorcyclists to wear helmets.
And cap’n –
I must say that your abject misery due to the sacrifices of your freedoms, created by laws that have resulted in many fewer deaths from automobile accidents, is a real tear-jerker.
Out of my cold, dead hands….
Josh,
Why should I care about a motorcyclist who died from head injuries?
I got news for you – we all gonna die. Why should a person be forced into something they don’t want to do based on it being for their personal safety? If someone wants to ride a motorcycle without a helmet, so be it. If they die from a head injury, that is their problem, not yours or mine.
All this brings to mind Rutherford’s famous comment: “We haven’t got the money, so we’re going to have to think”.
The plutocrats of Greenpeace, Sierra Club, etc, don’t seem to do a lot of thinking, do they?
Politicisation of the AGW debate has always been a fact of life and one of the reasons why I have been sitting on the fence for so long!
The machinations behind Heartland are no more than what goes on in any lobby group. Climategate, however, indicates to me that there are some moral/ethical issues with some of the participants in their eagerness to advance their “cause”.
Great response Dr. Curry!
In 2008, NASA initiated the Global Climate Change Education project. Here’s a link to their K-12 programs which also seek to “stimulate student interest in order to motivate higher levels of study in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, subjects”.
I agree with your comments questioning the relevance of K-12 Climate Change Education but given alarmist scare tactics, it seems logical to cover climate topics in an open and objective way to address K-12 student anxiety.
http://www.nasa.gov/offices/education/programs/index.html
Text book publishers go to get pains to ensure the accuracy of information and to present balanced views but can be influenced by State Standards. Subject matter that doesn’t comply with State Standards is unlikely to find its way into the classroom.
I’m not sure why anyone would object to taking the propaganda out of educational materials and to present data in a more meaningful way.
s/b
Text book publishers go to great pains …
I recall some of Wojick’s comments from last year when I seriously started monitoring this blog, which were about scientific argument. So I googled it and these are all from one thread I remembered reading:
http://judithcurry.com/2011/08/07/carbon-cycle-questions-part-ii/
and
and
and
Presented in his own words. You skeptics figure out what all this means. He’s your guy, deal with it.
Thanks WebHubTelescope,
Let’s hope Wojick does a better job with the educational materials. If the materials aren’t accurate, they will never find their way into a US classroom due to State Standards and potential liability for teachers.
Web –
You missed the most interesting of David’s comments, where he stated a primary focus (if not, perhaps, “the” most primary focus, I don’t remember his exact wording) on the political aspects of the climate debate.
Web pointed out that David said, “The coal burners are my heroes and I am proud of my advocacy work, especially as I am winning and you are losing.”
Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle coal power is not the villain it is made out to be. IGCC designs are nearly 50% efficient with about 10% of the efficiency diverted to scrubbers and other environmental measures. IGCC can be fueled with a mix of coal and biofuels including the mountains of garbage that the US is famous for currently. With the addition of hydrogen enhancement, inefficiencies of nearly 70% are quite doable and with low temperature desal or medium temperature water for industrial use, 80% very likely with reasonably balanced loading.
State of the art coal technology developed in the US and other higher technology nations is easily transportable to less developed nations where the likelihood of continued coal use is unavoidable. Coal is a responsible energy transition choice for the near future, 30 to 60 years, until other energies of the FUTURE come on line.
With the EPA’s new stringent regulation on power plant emissions, less than 10% of existing Coal plants are not economical to upgrade to meet the standards, those averaging over 50 years old and using technology greater than 50 years old. Biomass facilities on the other hand, will have a much more difficult time meeting the EPA requirements without benefit of cheap energy to supplement their processes.
Cost effective cellulose ethanol appears to require more and cleaner energy than many where lead to believe.
I think engineers are heroes myself since they can make something good out of about anything :)
“I wasn’t going to comment on this until the weekend, but looks like I better say something, since I was quick out the gate with my comments on Climategate.”
It isn’t that there is something terrible in Dr. Curry’s comments above (the total post). Then again it’s the nuances that are revealing. Not that I had much trouble with the document (even in the fake form) but clearly we are off by a factor of 10000 about potential “scandal” impact comparison. I see no scandal at all, Heartland is doing the job. You really have to consider Dr. Curry’s overall political sensibilities here. Really, are we kidding in a Climategate comparison as a starting point??
Climategate emails are real and largely reflect publically funded parties that make up the core of the ‘TEAM”. Imagined science leaders at that. Heartland is a private organization, a free-market think tank. If the scale of this funding source difference doesn’t enter the conversation quickly (it didn’t at all here) that is what’s truly offensive about both Climategate and more importantly government funded green advocacy it must not enter Dr. Curry’s mind at all. Climategate isn’t about private think-tanks of any side at all. That’s a pretty Tin Ear is there ever was one on the topic.
So we have something, even in the fake original form, that isn’t remotely close to Climategate and it immediately gets a false equivalence statement. “but it looks like I should say something????” Public funded fraud and deception vs. private parties doing whatever they want under the law. You have to wonder what type of political value system Dr. Curry is working with to think it needed to equivocated when they are so clearly different. Talk about indications of PC power at work. They say jump, she asks how high.
“private parties doing whatever they want under the law”
Tobacco companies did whatever they wanted under the law…
It’s legal to mislead people.
Yeah. Let’s all shout “Tobacco!!!”.
Easier than thinking for ourselves :)
Why do you make the assumption that the information will be misleading? In the case of the K-12 material, if its proven to be misleading then it will never find its way into classrooms. In the case of the data visualization tool, the intent is to make NOAA weather station data understandable which it currently isn’t.
If it were my grant, I’d want to review the materials that are currently finding their way into classrooms to eliminate half truths and disinformation.
lolwot,
Massive strawman alert in your backyard. I suggest matches and gasoline to solve the problem for you.
Jeez, I am sick to death of hearing ‘tobacco!’ shouted by those who can find nothing more relevant to say.
I am in my mid-50s. I always knew that fags were bad for me since I started on them at 15. And gave up 20 years ago.
So whatever tobacco companies may or may not have done must be at least 40+ years ago. And I really don’t f…g care.
It is water under the bridge. It has gone. It is no more…it is a non- controversy. It has turned up its toes and joined the choir invisible. It is dining with the angels. Bereft of life it is pushing up the daisies.
Today’s debate is about climate change. Not tobacco.
lolwot,
One really has to be an idiot to believe that smoking was ok from a health perspective, regardless of what tobacco companies said. I don’t know how old you are, but cigarettes were called coffin nails long before I was born.
The tobacco lawsuits were all about money. States wanting to get thier hands on it. If they really cared about us poor citizens, they would have focused on nitrates and not the health effects.
cwon14,
It wasn’t Dr. Curry who penned the analogy to ClimateGate. HeartlandGate, found in many of the articles, is being thrown around. I agree with you, there isn’t any similarity to ClimateGate — its apples and oranges.
John,
We can excuse just so much for Dr. Curry. It’s willful and she does it all the time. If she were one of the many luddite greens on this board it would be one thing.
Oh, for Gaia’s sake, cwon! What is it about:
that is so far beyond your ability to comprehend?!
But here’s a thought … Since you and the J-troll seem to share a similar virtual (but futile) mission in life, i.e. that of persuading readers here that Dr. Curry should address all issues exactly the way you would, perhaps you and he should seriously consider co-hosting a blog dedicated to AltClimateEtc (you could even call it ACE for short!)
For each of Dr. Curry’s posts you would each fire off an ACE post and drop a link here. Then anyone who is interested in
wasting their timeengaging your respective “arguments” can do so on your blogThen the grown-ups can have a far less noisy discussion. Think about it, eh … it’s win-win!
The personality cult arrives. Rather then address the observation which is valid the brown-nose smear machine starts.
“Dr. Curry should address all issues exactly the way you would,”
What a joke on the face of it, she should simply address core questions of political postures of participants directly. It’s a pretty minimal request if you want to address what is largely a political topic. In fact it’s a form of dishonesty when carried to this degree.
So we should conform to your 3rd grade reading comprehension level and avoid all of the nuance and mystery speak Dr. Curry is so expert in manufacturing?
Another bedwetting denizen, just what was needed.
Just to pound the point home to you again hro001;
Revkin is making the same error (willful of course) that I correctly pointed out Dr. Curry didn’t point out yesterday;
http://www.australianclimatemadness.com/2012/02/quote-of-the-day-andy-revkin/
The “public funding” part doesn’t make the average greens radar 99% of the time? Why? Because they live in Marxist narrative where the right of government servants are equal to the private sector. Dr. Curry’s rebuttal was lacking to an extreme.
The wuss factor of the skeptics attacking me for pointing out the obvious Dr. Curry’s lapses should be the cause for discussion and review. Get a clue!
This whole incident is “climate activism” in a nutshell: the real evidence was boring and inconclusive so they faked something up and threw it into the mix.
They projected, and wow, now it’s all up there on the big silver screen, shining in its glittery glory.
==================
The answer is right around the corner… with the pdo turning cold and the amo to follow, the global temps are beginning a jagged decline that will put an end to the AGW foolishness once and for all.. if we are allowed to actually evaluate data objectively.
Its obvious why the amount of money spent to prove AGW is much higher than the amount people are paid to disprove it. To create the scam out of nothing takes much more than simply relying on the truth
Joe do you really think the PDO “turning cold” will lower global temperatures. Do you really believe you know that? Or are you just following all the other skeptic sheeple who have deluded themselves into believing some bizarre astrology-like cycles “theory” that has no physical basis?
This “world is cooling” predictions by skeptics have been going for years and several have already failed badly. We’ve already flipped to negative PDO and we’ve had a deep solar minimum, but planet is still as warm as ever.
When the globe continues to warm it’s over for skeptics. Too many of you have jumped on the silly cooling bandwagon. It’ll be impossible for you all to justify some natural cause for continued warming because we’ll just point out all the countless blog posts and comments where you all so confidentially felt nature was going to cool us down.
lolwot,
“bizarre astrology-like cycles “theory”
There must be some natural cycles, or else the past temperature would look like a hockey stick, which it doesn’t.
“world is cooling” predictions by skeptics have been going for years and several have already failed badly’
What’s failed? The only prediction that’s failed so far is the ‘continued warming’ one.
“There must be some natural cycles”
okay then so that justifies fantasizing about the PDO. OK so my astrology based cycle theory will be that falling PDO = cooling. I note PDO has trended downwards since 1980. Therefore I conclude that PDO has contributed cooling since 1980, which is reaching it’s peak so the PDO cooling is nearly over.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/jisao-pdo/from:1900/plot/jisao-pdo/from:1980/trend
No less “scientific” than the PDO switch=cooling meme.
“What’s failed?”
This one: http://skepticalscience.com/year-after-mclean-review-of-2011-global-temperatures.html
This one: http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=197
This one is going to fail imminently:
http://junkscience.com/2012/01/26/global-cooling-coming-archibald-uses-solar-and-surface-data-to-predict-4-9c-fall/
Nearly every country in the world, that has a fishing industry, has done past studies on the natural climate cycles and the impact on fish populations, migration, etc.
It might be logical to do some research from a practical perspective before drinking any more run-away warming Kool-aid?
lolwot,
Yes, seasons along with warming and cooling periods, not to mention ice ages, are all strange and magical to the AGW believer.
Iolwot
The world has been generally cooling for 350 years so whether we will see a prolonged downturn now is something I wouldn’t want to predict. However within that generally cooling trend there are around one third of stations that have been cooling for a statistically meaningful period of time.
How does that fit in with the cagw theory? not snark, just genuinely interested. By the way whilst you are about it you can explain why you have such great faith in historic land and ocean temperatures and that last comment IS snark
Tonyb
Blah blah blah see none of you can defend your skeptic astrology cycles.
Yes the PDO exists. But “skeptic” astrologists go further and say that not only does it significantly impact global temperature, but they know it impacts it in a certain way (when it switches to cool it *starts* having a cooling effect). Unscientific bunkum.
As for Tonyb’s priceless comment when he first insists there has been cooling for 350 years – supposedly gathering this info from historic land and ocean temperatures.- and then later asks “why you have such great faith in historic land and ocean temperatures”, I have to assume he’s a grade A moron.
The Great European Freeze of 2012
has killed the AGW in Europe.
Reminiscent of the 1812 Napoleon’s fatal march on Moscow
lolwot,
You are starting now to sound as if Marcel is wispering in your ear.
And, even after they changed the name to Climate Change they have failed to address the implications of a colder and dryer climate.
“And, even after they changed the name to Climate Change ”
Yes I remember in 1988 when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was formed. Before that it was called the Intergovernmental Panel on Global Warming wasn’t it?
lolwot,
Saucy retorts that fail to address the problem statement are amusing but are likely to get you an F in Dissertation. No idea why I felt compelled to dish but hope it helps.
Best Regards
Maybe try better next time. Get some proper arguments, not BS ones that are easily debunked.
Iolwot said
‘As for Tonyb’s priceless comment when he first insists there has been cooling for 350 years – supposedly gathering this info from historic land and ocean temperatures.- and then later asks “why you have such great faith in historic land and ocean temperatures”, I have to assume he’s a grade A moron.’
Well you are right to pick me up on saying ‘cooling’ I meant warming of course, as I wrote in my article carried here ‘The long slow thaw’ which carried dozens of references to a warming world.
http://judithcurry.com/2011/12/01/the-long-slow-thaw/
it started;
‘A warming trend can be observed from 1659, the start date of Central England Temperature (CET)- the oldest instrumental record in the world- to today.’
You can see that intent from the context of my next comment as to whether there would be a downturn now, and also that there is a cooling trend exhibited by around one third of world stations for a statistcally meaningful period, in contrast to the generally warming trend. . My mistake, but surely it wasnt hard to see the context if you weren’t so eager to ridicule anything that conflicts with your world view?
If you read any of my articles you will see that i believe land temperatures show the general direction of travel, but not the preciseness of it. A quote based on something said by Hubert Lamb. I suppose you think he was a grade A moron as well?
This 350 year warming is also confirmed by such elements as glacier melt since 1750-quoted by Gordon Manley who developed CET-another grade A moron of course in your eyes.
When writing articles you have to use what is available-if I invented it you woulfd no doubt complain.
However, you still haven’t answered my direct qiestion as to why you believe in the preciseness of historic temperatures? Phil Jones and D Camuffo don’t, another pair of grade A morons I suppose?
Now how about actually doing some work here instead of flinging insults and tell me why you believe in say the preciseness of global sea surface temperatures to 1850?
tonyb
There is a big difference between IPPC’s climategate and Heartland’s. The former use our tax money, the latter its own money. The IPCC is formed by governments, Heartland by individuals. There is a big difference. It is apples and oranges.
It is a diversion from the current decade-long global cooling => http://bit.ly/nz6PFx
Found another decade-long global cooling for you
http://tinyurl.com/7zpnj4s
Didn’t signify an end to warming though.
Doesn’t look like it’s stopped this time either.
http://tinyurl.com/7u5r83c
That is just your hope unsupported by the data.
The cooling phase of PDO has started which is expected to continue for another two decades. Expect further global cooling by about 0.2 deg C by 2030s, which will make the global mean temperature values below the 1940s.
PDO
Several independent studies find evidence for just two full PDO cycles in the past century: “cool” PDO regimes prevailed from 1890-1924 and again from 1947-1976, while “warm” PDO regimes dominated from 1925-1946 and from 1977 through (at least) the mid-1990’s. Shoshiro Minobe has shown that 20th century PDO fluctuations were most energetic in two general periodicities, one from 15-to-25 years, and the other from 50-to-70 years
http://jisao.washington.edu/pdo/
“The cooling phase of PDO has started which is expected to continue for another two decades.”
There’s no scientific basis for the “cooling phase” of a PDO causing global cooling. You are talking BS. Skeptics are utterly clueless they just hear the phrase “cool PDO phrase” and assume from that name only that it must be a significant driver of global temperature.
Even as they decry the much more solid evidence for CO2 forcing.
Funny isn’t it? Kind of exposes their fake “skepticism”
“Expect further global cooling by about 0.2 deg C by 2030s, which will make the global mean temperature values below the 1940s.”
You have no basis for this claim other than fantasy. It’s ridiculous. Fake “skeptics” dismissing the weight of evidence that shows ghgs driving and we will continue to warm because it isn’t 100% proof but then fall for some BS about PDOs and insist that we’ll warm 0.2C by 2020/2030.
Well at least you guys are going to be discredited. It’ll be a wipe out. You won’t be able to make a come back when the world continues warming. You’ll be hoisted on your own failed predictions and I and others will be all over the internet reminding the public (and yourselves) at how the climate scientists got it wrong and how the only people who saw the warming coming were those who factored in the strong driving effect of rising greenhouse gases. Game over.
lolwot,
If you’re so sure why don’t you use your real name like Joe and Tony do?
Don’t use the excuse about getting death threats because your logic only hurts “the cause” . Keep it comming because it’s self defeating.
Max, do we have the whole picture of the earth’s energy balance?
I asked Ceteris for a link to information that equates CO2 rise to temperature rise. I’m new to this game, but so far I’ve spent a lot of time looking at his information and have yet to find out anything concerning the link between CO2 and temp (rise or not).Harries’ talks about energy balance.
Sorry, I thought I would get an education by interrecting, but so far – not so much.
What a shame! IF the science is wrong, why are we all throwing mud ??
It’s good you notice the difference. It’s good that I notice Dr. Curry doesn’t include the observation in her rebuttal. Instead she grasps at a nebulus “advocacy vs. science” meme which is exactly what warmists do all the time to get off the primary subject which is political agrenda.
The skeptics on the board attack me for point it out.
Here is Revkin getting what he deserves for such a clueless comparative;
http://www.australianclimatemadness.com/2012/02/quote-of-the-day-andy-revkin/
Dear Dr. Curry,
If I’m around when the volcano that ends the Holocene Interglacial pops its cork and the pitchfork carrying crowds come looking for the scientists and politicians who advocated for lowering the earth’s temperature instead of raising it, I’ll put in a good word for you.
When exactly do you think it was that the climate science community lost sight of the fact that the earth has been in an ice age for several million years and that the Holocene Interglacial is getting a little long in tooth? I’m 55 years old and I know it wasn’t before the early 1970’s that they forgot because the buzz then was that the Holocene was going to end by the turn of the century.
you are confusing popular news stories with science.
This line from the fake;
“Efforts might also include cultivating more neutral voices with big
audiences (such as Revkin at DotEarth/NYTimes, who has a well-known antipathy for some of the more extreme AGW communicators such as Rornm, Trenberth, and Hansen) or Curry (who has become popular with our supporters).”
I do suspect that is a dig at you Judy, ‘who has become popular with our supporters’.
“more neutral voices”
LOL, what can we expect from the foam at the mouth everyday warmists? Privately, I’m sure Dr. Curry is hated more than most “deniers” by hard liners because at the end of the day she is a “traitor”. By sitting on the fence as she does it’s a form of blackmail as well, they largely have to bite their tongue as to not push her further away from the true religion.
It’s a sad statement about a fringe culture but it’s sad also that Dr. Curry panders all the time to this crew. It’s on display here as well. Does she condemn these lunatic sites she listed? Think Progress: Green?? Condemn? She can’t even speak of what political party they are associated to. The next post might be about “climate communication”, how’s that for irony? On the most important aspects of the climate divide she is “no comment” but has elaborate commentary on “communication”.
The denizens says little about such contradictions of logic, gutless that they often are. They’re all waiting for Elvis to arrive and get approval.
If you really want a study of propaganda organization in the news recently, complete with JournOlist connections to the NYTimes and White House alike consider Media Matters;
http://dailycaller.com/2012/02/14/alan-dershowitz-media-matters-could-become-rev-wright-of-2012-for-obama/
This is what “scandal” looks like. Money, partisan media bias, hack political operatives linked to the current administration acting in concert.
Been reading the commentary re how the dozens of dollars pouring into Heartland Institute are thwarting the best efforts of the grossly underfunded government/green/climate science self-licking ice cream cone to educate our children on the existential threat to Gaia posed by the deadly pollutant, CO2. It is obvious that Climate Science continues as it was founded: an axiomatic science.
Some discussion above evolved out of the revelation that the Heartland Institute wants to pay David Wojick $100,000 to develop climate teaching modules that will meet the Institute’s approval, in contrast to the large inventory of current resources that are already available (consult the National Science Teachers Association website for many dozens of examples of the latter). It’s a substantial amount of money to one individual to promote the Institute’s perspective, although not very much in the context of the educational system as a whole. Whether Heartland will realize a return on its $100,000 investment will be hard to estimate.
I mentioned my own recent interest in the teaching realm. My exchanges with some participants may have had a facetious side to them, but my interest is serious, and my devotion to the goal of accurate and objective content is serious. I’m also beginning to learn how difficult it is to realize that goal within the constraints of a high school teaching environment. Perhaps if I were a teaching professional rather than a guest speaker, I would find it easier, but I tend to doubt it.
A while back, the late Stephen Schneider made some inartful comments about climate change communication in the sound bite era when he said “Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.” What he meant remains a matter of dispute, but in empathizing with what may have been his thinking, my own conclusion is that telling the whole truth about climate change is not only impossible in sound bites, it’s also impossible in a 50 minute classroom talk. As far as I can tell, “balance” isn’t the issue; it just can’t be done. At best, we can begin to tell a little bit of the truth, and avoid misrepresenting the rest.
I gave two invited classroom talks yesterday to high school students on climate change and its impacts. They were well received, but afterwards, I felt dissatisfied. I realized that much of my talks consisted of describing scientific conclusions, and relatively little the underlying evidence. At the same time, I understood that to adequately describe the evidence underlying even one of the dozen or so points I felt needed attention would consume the entire 50 minutes and much more. If I left out all the other points to focus on one, I would not be telling the whole truth. If I left out the underlying evidence, I would not be telling the whole truth, and faced with that dilemma, I simply tried to tell partial truths in each direction while alerting students to the fact that they weren’t going to hear all the details of either the conclusions or the uncertainties surrounding them. I have faced a similar dilemma when talking to college audiences, science teachers, or the general public.
I don’t think science teachers have a dire need for preformed climate science teaching modules. They need a large array of resources to which they can turn, they need sufficient education in the subject so that they can choose how best to use those resources to develop their own teaching content, and they need insulation from the wrath of partisans among parents, school boards, or state legislatures who want to restrict their ability to make independent judgments on the merits of scientific conclusions. I admire them, but in today’s environment, I’m not sure I would envy them even if they made much more than $100,000 every year.
I really wonder Fred if this subject is a proper subject for study in high school. It is really advanced science more properly taught as undergraduate physics. We don’t do special lectures to high school students about medical research unless there is a direct issue for them, such as smoking education for example. We teach biology and elementary physics. Perhaps high school students have enough on their plate given the enormous expansion of knowledge and the seeming removal of rigor from science education.
Maybe I’m wrong, just asking. I’m sure your lectures Fred are very good.
David,
Surely it’s a subject that can be taught at a number of different levels? I don’t know what specific age group we are talking about here but I’d have thought the basic principles of the greenhouse effect, feedbacks and climate sensitivity, our knowledge of past climate change etc. can be taught in a way that is understandable to high school students? I certainly think it is a relevant issue for them.
Can we make sure that we are talking apples and apples here/
In UK ‘high school’ usually means from about age 11 to about age 17. Is this the same in the US?
I’d certainly agree that beyond about 15 y.o. the students should have sufficient maturity to appreciate the issues. But I also wonder if hearing yet again about ‘climate change’ after an entire school career dripping with it already won’t be a huge turn off.
Latimer,
From my brief research on Wikipedia it appears that high school in the US covers ages 14-18. From my knowledge gleaned from American teen movies it is certainly apparent that all US high schoolers are old enough to drive cars and actually look like they are in their mid twenties.
@andrew adams
Thanks for the input.
Good to know that your visit to Saturday Night Fever was not wasted! :-) I remember it from undergraduate days…………….
Fred,
You are just pushing AGW propaganda dressed up as science.
What a sad way for you to chose to end what sounds like was a significant career.
24 ‘I’s in that submission. Way up there with Joshua for attention to self
Fred. Kudos to you for your work with high school students. The sessions that you give would obviously need to be worded concisely and clearly in order to engage these students and congratulations if you succeeded in doing this.
Did you touch on the controversy around the AGW hypothesis and did you suggest that the viewpoints of the more moderate sceptics need to be evaluated? Or is this too complex for HS students?
Fred,
Teaching – “I realized that much of my talks consisted of describing scientific conclusions, and relatively little the underlying evidence.”
So, basically you teach a conclusion and part of the evidence supporting that conclusion. And then worry you haven’t taught *all* of the evidence supporting that conclusion.
Do you ever teach the possibility of other conclusions?
Socrates must be spinning in his grave, assuming the modern Greeks haven’t dug up his body and sold it for debt reduction.
What cui says.
Based on my experience, it is more important to expose students to the scientific process and to get them thinking. I have learned to answer questions with a question and also that it is better for a student to think for himself, even when he or she may be headed down the wrong path, then it is to lecture or tell them the facts.
At the same time, I understood that to adequately describe the evidence underlying even one of the dozen or so points I felt needed attention would consume the entire 50 minutes and much more.
In that case you could save 48 minutes by arguing the other side.
Anyone who can’t argue their side of the climate debate in 2 minutes is just letting down their side by attempting to defend it.
Rob Starkey | February 15, 2012 at 8:15 pm | Reply
“How does any high school in the US allow Fred to teach his views on climate change? That would seem to meet the definition of propaganda being taught in schools.”
I would imagine it’s the same manner by which some high schools let graduation rates slide below 50%. Apathy and lack of accountability in students, faculty, and community. Lack of accountability is the major problem in climate science. In engineering we have to make predictions that will be tested in the near future and if we screw up we get fired. What happens to the rare climate scientist who actually makes a prediction that can be tested in some reasonable near term and it’s wrong? Absolutely nothing happens. They are not accountable for their errors. They spend other people’s money and risk none of their own.
My the warmers are in a panic. Love it.
Hey Fred, here’s a little bit of truth to being the climate talks with.
The earth is in an ice age. The Holocene Interglacial is a temporary respite from a world where ice a mile thick covers much of the northern hemisphere. The interglacial is statistically nearing its end. The next big volcano that erupts like the barely sleeping monster that underlies Yellowstone National Park, could erupt any day and plunge the entire planet into cold and darkness that lasts until you’re all dead.
How’s that? You know, as a balance against the horror stories the kiddies hear from Al Gore about how they’re all going to drown in rising seas. Getting buried in ice seems a fair counter to that and it’s absolutely true.
What say you?
Dave – I gather from your comment that you know very little climate science. It’s late, I’m not prepared to stay up much longer, and so I won’t dwell on your misconceptions, but if you have an interest in learning rather than arguing, please feel free to email me.
I don’t usually comment on politics, but the funding aspect of this issue is very important. I would estimate that millions of dollars are invested in untenable alarmist climate modeling fantasies (the salaries & hardware alone would do it) for every dollar invested in legitimate, essential, important research on natural climate. Personally, I decided to stop shopping around for funding because there was too much red tape & politics with every source of funding, much of it demanding (unsuccessfully) that I do things with which I disagree fundamentally. The whole situation with funding is thoroughly disgusting all the way around. Any really honest, serious, sensible, & capable researcher will be left out in the cold to freeze. No matter which “side” or system (academic, private, ngo, whatever) one pursues for funding, one will be stuck being a crook of one form or another. Truly sickening. But nature’s beautiful, so we’ll find a way. Best Regards.
you just don’t understand science. That’s your problem.
Are you suggesting that science is corrupt by nature?
lolwot,
And you do understand science?
Please demonstrate.
To reiterate & clarify: The problem isn’t absence of funding opportunities; rather it’s the red tape & politics that make available funding avenues unacceptable.
Fred Moolton
You want each high school science teacher to independently determine what to teach kiddies about the natural world?
Serious? High school teachers are generally clowns who can’t independently think their way out of a paper bag but did manage to get a teaching credential tacked onto a 4-year degree from an undistinguished local state college. Everybody with a bigger brain is either a university professor (the next level of failure to compete in the real world) or is in the commercial world earning a fortune and having a blast doing it. I myself was given the equivalent of three (unshared) Nobel prize awards ($3 million before taxes) for my contributions in math and science in private industry and I did it before my 44th birthday. Now I do what the tenured crowd does which is pretty much whatever I want and I answer to no one. The difference is I really earned my reward instead of just politicing my way along a tenure track.
Not all high school teachers and university professors are like that of course. There are exceptions to every rule but that’s still pretty much the rule in my experience.
Fred Moolten
I’ll go toe to toe with you any day in just about any area of science including climate. You don’t stand a chance. Run along now. You look like you really really need a beauty sleep.
Hey Fred, it was a short comment. We don’t need to take it offline.
Just tell me what part you don’t agree with.
A smoldering supervolcano under Yellowstone?
The Holocene Interglacial?
The Pleistocene Ice Age?
Volcanic winter?
That about covers it. Which one don’t you understand?
Dave – You’ll have to forgive my somewhat abrupt earlier reply, but your comments didn’t suggest that you were someone who wanted to improve your knowledge. ‘As I said, it’s late, and if you email me, I can start you off with some useful references on the mechanisms responsible of interglacial termination. Just briefly, the 5C descent into the last glacial maximum occurred gradually over tens of thousands of years, with little change in the early centuries. Much of it was driven by a reduction in atmospheric CO2 as an amplification mechanism for the weak orbital forcing. Current estimates differ, with some predictions of the gradual start of another glaciation as early as 5000 years in the future, but with a preponderance of evidence indicating this would occur closer to 30,000 to 40,000 years from now. There is no hint of evidence for the beginning of a glaciation any time in the next several hundred or even a few thousand years.
My own view is that you come across as foolish with taunts about going “toe to toe” with me, or that I “don’t stand a chance”. Even if this was a subject that you knew well, and it’s clear you don’t, those comments would look juvenile, particularly since you have no idea how much I do or don’t know about the subject. In any case, if you’d like to learn more, feel free to email me, or wait for a thread devoted to that particular topic (this thread is about something else).
I would be interested in any evidence that a volcanic eruption precipitated a glaciation.
Will you give me even odds that we will get to 2x preindustrial CO2 before Yellowstone, or any other supervolcano blows its top?
I am a little annoyed that this thread is attracting so much comment compared to the much more important post on ergodicity. My reaction is a big yawn. You know its no different than what happens at thousands of interest groups every day. Planned Parenthood employees actually violate the criminal law and it raises no alarms. Please, forget this revelation of the obvious and common and get on with the important stuff.
Agreed, people can learn something at the ergo thread.
I read the intro to the ergo thread.
It appeared to be a rather obscure part of some maths theory about which various parties could lather themselves into a semantic and definitional froth and kick lumps out of each other.
But it did not seem to have any real world relevance to anything.
Maybe I missed the point. But if not, I fail to see how it is ‘important’.
David, like me you have only been visiting this blog for a short time. There seems to be three types of contributors here:
(a) the geniune seekers of the truth, who devour all the sciency stuff and try to adapt their thinking as they go;
(b) the biased contributor on both sides of the AGW fence, who are only looking for confirmation of their POV and intent on derailing those who disagree with them, often with rudeness and ad hominems; and
(c) the experts who are not only knowledgable but are willing to share their knowledge but who for the most part will only tolerate contributors who have a genuine desire to learn and show due civility in language and respect for the views of others.
We all know who we are don’t we?
+1
If you view the agw issue as one of predominate technical or scientific dispute people will tend to agree with you. That basic framing is quite false of course in the global view and it’s done great harm to society to maintain such a position regarding AGW.
Sure there is a technical framework but it’s always been about carbon regulations and ambitions from the 1960’s on in particular. Perhaps young people for example don’t seem aware of the contact tracing of the actual history that brought us to this point regarding agw. co2 = warming comes from a long evolution of competing green fear/anger based objectives targeting industry with a goal to regulate with very familiar dogma for a very similar generation.
The ergodicity topic isn’t closed is it? You could all go over there and talk about ergodicty as much as you want. That warmist are so knee-jerk to strike a false equivalence to Climategate over forged .pdf file from Heartland and that Dr. Curry herself doesn’t touch on many obvious rebuttal points is very interesting. It says much more about where we are than ergodicity or most abstract and debatable technical topics will ever bring us.
David,
In today’s world Planned Parenthood, a lucrative remnant of racist eugenics, is nearly bullet proof. Their workers are doing such glorious work that pesky things like laws and freedom of conscience are mere road bumps.
Pushing AGW catastrophism is not political to many people, while even questioning it is wickedly cynically political, as Joshua tediously and repetitively demonstrates.
Stop scaring the children! What is it with this desire to teach (preach?) apocalyptic nonsense to elementary age kids? Completely reprehensible.
Kudos to NCSE for their evolution work. Raspberries for their idiotic climate plan. Heartland’s educational counter-balance seems a rather reasonable response, but I agree, keep it to high school and teach the controversy.
Thanks to Judith for being such a voice of reason.
“What is it with this desire to teach (preach?) apocalyptic nonsense to elementary age kids?”
That’s no way to talk about Sunday Schools.
Ah, the warmists are starting to get the analogy.
I agree GeneDoc, it is reprehensible but it stems from the extremist fringe not the Scientific Community.
NASA Teaching Material Results for Environment
http://tinyurl.com/6mbpfdx
Only the naive have failed to reconcile themselves to the obvious fact that the government is run by the best politicians money can buy.
I can see where a country that prides itself on its socialist leanings would be bothered by this, but what about a country that is proud of its capitalist tendencies? A democracy that will sell itself to the highest bidder may sound terrible, but what serious alternative has ever panned out in the long run?
The theory that AGW is a hoax aimed at lining the pockets of the 1% by picking the pockets of the 99% makes no sense in a democracy. It fails to recognize that the only way the 1% can make more money is by picking each other’s pockets, as we see when companies jockey in life-or-death battles for position.
Democracy is the 99% voting for their favorite pickpockets.
Until climate skeptics put their money where their mouth is, they can’t be taken seriously by serious voters. This system has been blessed by no less than the SCOTUS in their endorsement of SuperPACs. Just in case there was any doubt, the Supreme Court has also declared CO2 a pollutant.
Could any judicial entity have sent a clearer message?
Vaughan, I sympathize with your issue. But you know my similar complaints were answered when I was an undergraduate by a friend on the faculty. He pointed out that this is at a fundamental level the meaning of money. It is the ability to do things you feel are relevant or right or in your own interest. You can argue about the distribution of wealth, but its hard to see money in any other light. Money started as sovereigns ability to control their kingdoms. Now the sovereign is the Government and money is a tool of government policy. But in the US, there is still some vestage of the enlightenment idea that the individual should count for more than the collective. And there is still the ability of individuals to influence the world using their money. That at least is progress. It’s a philosophical question. Do you trust individuals or the Congress, which we all know is virtuous on so many levels.
Dr. Pratt,
You are using a red herring to make false choices in defense of the credibility of the AGW movement.
Only the naive have failed to reconcile themselves to the obvious fact that the government is run by the best politicians money can buy.
Unfortunately, the country for the most part is run by bureaucrats who may or may not be qualified to perform the work they are performing.
No, the supreme court told the EPA that if it deemed CO2 to be a pollutant, it must regulate it under the Clean Air Act. Unsurprisingly, the EPA, wishing to regulate, then deemed CO2 to be a pollutant.
Vaughan Pratt
At least the SCOTUS was consistent.
(Consistently misguided, that is.)
Max
“The surprising thing is the paltry funding that the libertarian think tanks have relative to the green groups (e.g. WWF, Greenpeace, etc.) “
It only takes a little bit of poo to poison the barrel.
Thank you for your little bit of contribution!
And back at Mark F for his miniscule response.
The surprising thing is the paltry funding that the libertarian think tanks have relative to the green groups (e.g. WWF, Greenpeace, etc.) …
( To say nothing of totalitarian think tanks like CRU and other government univerisities ).
> It only takes a little bit of poo to poison the barrel.
No it doesn’t. It takes the exposure of systemic, unrepentant deceit in thousands of leaked emails.
“It takes the exposure of systemic, unrepentant deceit in thousands of leaked emails.”
I think you prove JBowers point. There wasn’t systemic unrepentant deceit in the emails. That’s how the deniers framed it.
Trying to “gate keep peer review” as if Phil Jones had a say on all the papers published in the field.
@lolwot
‘We’ll keep it out of the literature even if we have to redefine what peer-review means to do so’ P. Jones
He may not have entirely succeeded, but Jones ambition was clearly to ‘have a say on all the papers published in the field’.
And he was aided and abetted by all his like-minded chums.
“I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”
Phil Jones to Michael Mann, Climategate emails, July 8th 2004.
Of course there is systemic, unrepentant deceit in the emails. It’s just that Climategate deniers try to dress it up as science.
And if you think the systemic, unrepentant deceit is the work of just a few out-and-out crooks – the IPCC Climategate leading lights – why are these crooks still in their jobs and unpunished ? Why have so few climate scientists criticized them? Why the deafening silence ?
The answer is seems clear : the entire profession is rotten to the core (the odd exceptions noted). Mainstream climate science is hopelessly tainted by political funding and advocacy, hard-wired to be alarmist. And spending orders of magnitude more money than everyone else put together.
BS guys. Phil Jones isn’t talking about all literature he’s talking about what papers to mention in a report. He obviously thought they were too poor for inclusion. Plus his comment ends in a exclamation mark denoting hyperbole. Plus the papers were cited in the report after-all.
Compare that to your exaggerations that Phil Jones decides on every paper in the world whether it gets published or not.
lolwot,
Stop trying to restrict Punksters wide-raging paranoic conspiracy’s by comparing them to reality.
I defend Punksters right to be in his own delusional world.
> Stop trying to restrict Punksters wide-raging paranoic conspiracy’s by comparing them to reality. I defend Punksters right to be in his own delusional world.
Oh dear oh dear, the tired old conspiracy strawman yet again …
Michael, an organization working to further its own interests does not require a conspiracy. It’s normal behaviour. CAGW thinking is funded by government, and, if enough people believe it, will hugely benefit government, justifying as it does a big jump towards a more totalitarian society (more taxes, government agencies & regulations). See the blindingly obvious connection ?
And when you add to this the widespread secrecy and dishonesty that is the hallmark of much government-funded climate science – as eg Climategate showed – the picture becomes even clearer.
So, for government-funded climate science to promote CAGW and alarmism, is exactly to be expected, exactly what they were selected for – to serve the institution of government, their paymaster. No conspiracy needed. Indeed, it would suggest a conspiracy if this was not happening. So you are about as wrong as it is possible to be.
Utterly delusional, in fact. Which is your right.
That the IPCC and CRU (and every other government-funded university and agency) are accountable to government, does not mean they are not advocacy groups. It simply means they are advocates for (more) government. To deny this is seriously delusional.
Indeed the IPCC is perhaps the best example of an advocacy group one is ever likely to find. And of course it and other government-funded climate alarmists outspend skeptics by a factor of perhaps 10,000, hence the ‘consensus’.
The IPCC and CRU report science.
Heartland distorts science. Smears it. Repeatedly and with no accountability.
What blowback did Heartland get for that false “Surface Stations: Policy Driven Deception” they got Watt’s and D’Aleo to publish? None.
IPCC and CRU distort science. Bunch of bureaucrats, owned by Big Money.
lolwot,
Yet both CRU and IPCC are caught in riting distorting and lying about science.
Yet your faith is so strong, and your credulity so high that you simply pretend it is not so.
That mechanism of yours that permits such anon-rational immature position is the fascinating little crystal at the heart of every believer.
I see you making such claims, so I would be interested in seeing your point by point, direct factual evidence of “smears” and “distortion”. Links please.
@lolwot : The IPCC and CRU report science.
Hilarious. The IPCC and CRU don’t even know what science is, as illustrated by the following comment from their leading light Phil Jones
– Why should I show you my data when I know you’ll try and find something wrong with it ?
A ten-year-old in school would probably be 0/10 in a test if he made a comment as stupid and militantly anti-science as that. Yet ‘Proferssor’ Jones does it, and not a soul in those institutions as much as even notices it.
The truth is the IPCC and CRU are just blinkered advocacy groups.
So a bunch of left wingers are bad with money and the right wingers are effective with it.
Well I’m surprised!
My tennpennorth of deduction about the faker. I must have been watching too many FBI Files or something……..
I agree that this is a fake. Leaving aside the technical stuff, it just doesn’t have the ‘look and feel’ that such a real document on such a topic would have, The other exhibits show that Heartland’s internal workings are pretty professional, that they have a house style, that they are used to being exact in their work and run their office in an organised way.
It is (to me at least) inonceivable that a senior staff member would write such an important document (for if real it would be the strategic plan) for internal consumption in a style so far removed from the norm.
But we must assume that the faker believed that their rather inept attempt at a forgery would be taken at face value. What can this tell us about his/her identity?
1. They are not at all familiar with the ways, habits and mindset of senior staff in any institution. The ‘ambience’ is wrong, the phrasing is wrong, the general tone of the document is wrong for the way those guys work. Compare and contrast the fake with the thoroughly researched and argued real ‘Fundraising Plan’ to see the difference.
2. We can rule out any of the established pro-AGW groups like Greenpeace or WWF or those sort of guys. They may be very misguided, but they are not naive. They would do a professional job that would last more than 24 hours of scrutiny.
3. There is (I think) no factual detail in the fake that cannot be gleaned from the other released documents. No further supporting detail, no ‘mood music’. It is, in essence, just a rehash of the other documents with a supposedly disobliging commentary added to it. We can conclude that this is unlikely to come from a Heartland insider or disgruntled employee – unless at a very junior level like security staff, cleaner or janitor.
4. The faker is familiar with the ‘Climate Wars’. And some of the phrasing betrays their own position ‘We pay to undermine the official UN IPCC reports’ is a tell. As is ‘other contributions….from corporations whose interests are threatened by climate policies’. And of course ‘two key points that are effective at dissuading teachers from teaching science’.
I’d guess (no surprises here) that the faker is to the far side of the pro green, anti corporation side of the debate.
5. The wording and phrasing seems to be (though wrong for the supposed purpose) consistent throughout. This is not a document that has had multiple editors, or at least had had one overriding editor to impose the uniform style. But my feeling is that it was done by one individual
6. The faker must have assumed that he would get away with it – that his fake would be accepted. He has a high regard for his own abilities, and probably little regard for those of others.
7. This was an opportunistic fake, not a planned scam. Once he/she had obtained the real Heartland documents and found them to be thoroughly dull, they needed something to spice their adventure up a bit. And this is the result. I doubt that they spent more than a few hours constructing it, and the timeline shows that they were keen to get rid of the evidence asap. Not for them the patience of a two-year wait for Climategate 2.
My best guess is that this was done by a bright individual working alone, with no actual experience in large institutions. A ‘greenie’ with a computer and a scanner. Not an insider. One with a high regard for himself, but not a mastermind planning their every move ten years ahead.
I’ll leave others to consider what ‘profile’ this may fit, but my personal view is tending to the spotty youth working away alone in his bedroom. Or a disgruntled middle-aged loner.
Time will tell
I disagree. This appears to me to be prototypical annual prospectus material sent under NDA to qualified donors. Moreover Wojick confirmed he’s made the described proposal. If it’s a fake a skilled writer put a lot of effort into it and appears to have incorporated factual information.
My guess is that it was a document still in development that was never actually sent to anyone so Heartland has 100% confidence that a forgery claim can never be disproven. Given that it was scanned and not an original document it was probably copied quickly from an unguarded original print which makes it seem suspiciously like an inside job. It couldn’t have been faxed because fax machines keep track of senders and receivers and that would provide an evidentiary trail to the source difficult to dispute.
So here’s what I think. I think the Heartland employee who was allegedly conned into sending the documents to a person posing as a board member was more likely paid to do it. No disgruntled employee. No altruistic whistle blower. Just someone with access to electronic copies of a few documents and able to surreptitiously Xerox a copy of a strategy document. Through a process of elimination a higher-up at Heartland was able to pinpoint the one person who had the access and that person, when confronted, made up the story about someone posing as a board member. That sounds way too cloak and daggarish when a simple smallish bribe in the 4 digit range is sufficient to get the job done and that wouldn’t be criminal.
The Heartland assertions they’ll find and put the perpetrator in jail are almost certainly empty. The perp would be entitled to discovery and then all Heartland’s internal documents and confidential donors would be exposed. They won’t be going that route even if the story about the fake board member is true and they identify the faker.
I love a good conspiracy theory though. Great fun constructing and desconstructing them. Pass the popcorn.
A beautiful artifact of the climate wars.
Someone who self-describes as a “skeptic” develops an elaborate and very detailed fantasy to explain the reasons for an occurrence for which, in fact, he has absolutely none of the pertinent facts.
The irony is dazzling. Awe-inspiring. Truly a sight to behold.
You’re a village idiot Joshua. Even though it’s clearly a fake for many reasons placed on the board there is no relative comparison to Climategate which all about public funded activity.
What Dr. Curry or you didn’t bring to the table;
http://www.australianclimatemadness.com/2012/02/quote-of-the-day-andy-revkin/
The science vs advocacy conversation is pathetic and shameful.
JC – Is there a chance that the idea that if you are a skeptic you have to be a libertarian could be dropped please ? I have always voted left of centre in the UK – and all of our mainstream parties are to the left of the US Democratic party – and I am a skeptic – and I’m not the only one.
+1.
+2
and I am an American and have almost always voted Democrat (and always for the POTUS)
Chris, you can be a left libertarian – in fact that’s where I appear when I do the ‘political compass’ quiz
People have focussed on the total Heartland budget of about $6.6M.
But it is very much worth noting that climate change is not its only interest.
Table 12 of the ‘Fundraising’ document, shows that of the $2,905,00 to be spent on ten ‘new projects’ in 2012, only three are AGW related, and their total expenditure is planned to be $488,000.
So the actual amount spent on climate change stuff is considerably less than the headline figure.
Creating a false image of settled science from very unsettled science and a laundry basket filled with non-falsifiable claims is a long and expensive proposition. Exposing the chicanery is quick and inexpensive in comparison. All you have to do is identify one instance of deceit to destroy the credibility of the whole lot. Climategate did just that.
This is a transparent attempt by the warmists to get some payback for Climategate. I mean even if it works it doesn’t make the climate change hoax rise from the dead. Sweet revenge, yes. Poetic justice, yes. Restoration to glory, no.
It’s entertaining but I already knew both sides of the controversy were chock full of partisan lunatics. I think everyone except the partisan lunatics themselves are pretty well aware of that though. So if you disagree with me that means you’re a partisan lunatic. ;-)
If I were a religious person (which I am not), I’d almost think that the Gods sent us Climategate to show that we are doing their work. That they send us FakeGate as well would merely confirm it….
:-)
Whoever did it – and the list of suspects seems to be narrowing nicely – must really have believed that the rest of the world is populated by morons. Could even be that they thought they were so clever as to refer to themselves approvingly in the text…….
I think FakeGate already counts as a spectacular backfire. For some reason I can hear Michael Caine saying “You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off” even though the analogy doesn’t quite fit.
Mr “I’m justified in slagging off a book I’ve never read” may justifiably be looming in the spotlight, but I quite like the idea of a cunning spoof. Not by Heartland itself, but somebody sympathetic who judged fairly accurately how it would all play out. I.e genuine revalations=none, alarmist embarrassment=loads, and funding for HI=subsequently increased.
I could be wrong of course and it could be that someone in the world is actually stupid enough to put their name in a faked document.
@anteros
The quote that springs to my mind is at the very end (literally) of Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid
FakeGate Perp to sidekick: ‘For a moment there I thought we were in trouble’.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgCSl9xgzKw
A long clip, but always worth watching again.
chrismorph
I think you just described me as well – I would self-identify as a Liberal in the British system (i.e. marginally left of centre for UK politics), Earth Science education to PhD level and a skeptic of big warming (I’ve said elsewhere if I had to bet a range it would be 0.5 +/- 0.5 deg C warming per doubling of CO2). No poiltical motivation, just that my BS detector went off when I first heard about catastrophic warming
Ian
My BS detector went off as well when I saw how the AGW crowd reacted to the challenge “show me the science”. I expected more professional behavior, and less ” liar, liar. pants on fire”
The one that really annoys me is
‘I’m not here to do your homework. Google it!’
which first makes me wonder why they came to a discussion oriented blog in the first place. And secondly tells me that they likely haven’t got a f****g clue about the question.
A quick note. I am on travel, left my laptop in the airport, at a hotel paying $9.95 per 15 mins for internet time, and i don’t have my wordpress password. If you are caught in spam, my apologies. Should get the password soon, and someone else will take over moderation. I will check back when I can.
Good luck getting your laptop back.
Check for your credibility while you’re there.
Michael- you really are a low brow but then we all knew that before
Dennis,
Hadn’t you noticed, low brow is the position occupied by Climate Etc.?
I’m sure Judith hadn’t planned for this, but just look at the avalanche of bunk spewed out by the ‘denizens’ here.
Discussions on Climate Etc making a contribution to science is significantly less likely than is a pig sitting on a broken typewriter producing a Pulitzer winning novel .
The main one I see spewing bunk is you, Michael. Even Joshua, who likes to be contrarian at times, has a rational head at the end of the day. You on the other hand are acting in a completely different manner. Have you forgotten my lessons to you?
Saying “check for your credibility” is a snide comment with no substance, the very meaning of “bunk”.
Instead of being sympathetic to a lost laptop, you attempt to do a personal attack. That is, quite frankly, a pitiful act for a person to do. What credibility do you have to say for yourself?
Michael,
I haven’t seen you contributing to the science around here.
Do you contribute to the science on other not-so-lowbrow sites, or do you spend all your time denigrating sceptics and high-fiving each other?
dennis,
you’d be amazed at what airlines can lose.
“at a hotel paying $9.95 per 15 mins for internet time”
Wow. You can get smashed on mini-bar booze while watching hotel porn for less than $9.95 per 15 minutes. Nice little racket the hotel has going there.
I estimate it cost you two bits just to add the note about how much it was costing you.
Storm in a tea-cup?
Sure.
Who’s surprised that the Heartland Institute has a political goal in discussing climate science.?
No one who practices scepticism, that’s for sure.
Michael,
The annoying implication in the faux rage of the believer community is that believer groups are not playing politics. The trolls here, and the Romm’s, etc. etc. all wish to slip in the whopper that they are only practicing good science with no agenda.
And likewise for the ‘skeptics’ who pretend to lament the politicization of science…..while acting out their political agendas wrt climate science.
hunter, you do understand that “all wish to slip in the whopper that they are only practicing good science with no agenda.”; this is their agenda? The struggle between: cultural ethics v. personal morals, will continue. Watched pots, never seem to boil when they should
Michael,
My position since I first noticed what the believers were up to and became a skeptic is that AGW is a social/political movement veneered with a lot of sciencey words and claims. The way to fight it is to do what is being done: show the holes in the sciencey parts (that is the job of skeptics) and fight its power in the political arena: block as many of the AGW policy demands as possible.
That is exactly what is happening worldwide. Fortunately for us all, the skeptics are starting to win.
I do not lament the politicization of science. Scientists are people. People are political. I lament the corruption of science and society by AGW, a shabby social mania that pushes apocalyptic clap-trap. Politics and social movements are simply how people work together with ideas. It is only the bad ones, like AGW, that need to be fought.
This Heartland doc theft and forgery is already backfiring on the believers. Climategate leak 3.0 will come. Weather is still going to continue to fail to cooperate with the catastrophist bs pushed by AGW. Reality ultimately cures AGW, just like it has cured every other apocalyptic movement.
Fluent gibberish.
Michael,
To paraphrase what someone said a long time ago, let those who can read, understand.
I am sorry you can do the former and not the latter.
hunter,
Brevity. Try it.
Why not give hunter a ‘tener’, Michael? It has always been the basic solution for any questions about Progress since the day Stalin, won his job.
“Tenner”
sorry…
Michael,
Get back to us when you have a point.
Fred Moolten
You’re a boor. No one of any consequence invites strangers off the internet to one-on-one tutoring or whatever the hell it is you think you’re offering. As for your fantastic assessment of when the Holocene might end or how it will there is no credible evidence that it will last another 30 thousand years and thus become the longest interglacial ever. Regardless of how long it takes for mile thick glaciers to advance below 40 degrees north latitude volcanic winters happen almost literally overnight. I suggest you learn a little bit more about them and no I’m not going to give you personal instruction via email as my time is obviously more important to me than yours is to you and if I’m going to lecture it’s going to be to a much larger audience so more is accomplished in the same span of time. Get back to me when you know more.
A de facto admission of (militant) ignorance.
De facto? Really? No other possibilities you can construct?
Using the same critical thinking skills you are “de facto” Fred Moolten’s sock puppet. LOL
@Fred Moolten
You totally ignored my point about volcanic winter.
You lose. Thanks for playing.
Dave – my email invitation still stands. I’ve found it useful in distinguishing between individuals who hope to engage in informative dialog from those who want to have a fight in front of an audience (the blogosphere). Quite a few individuals have already taken me up on it, so I know it works for anyone willing to forego the public audience in order to learn something. I can also suggest some good references for you to visit if you’re interested, but I’m not willing to take the trouble to discuss any of this fully if you simply want to argue. .
Of course “volcanic winter” is on everyone’s mind as a remote possibility, just like an asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs…
Chris – both are certainties. It’s just a question of timescales.
The Toba supervolcano catastrophe theory suggests that about 70K years ago the human population was reduced to perhaps 15,000 individuals.
Mitochondrial DNA (inherited only from one’s mother) suggests a single ‘Eve’ origin at 140K years ago, and Y chromosome DNA (from dads only) suggests a single ‘Adam’ origin at 70K years ago.
‘Mother’ Nature has tried to kill us all off more than once, and recently, which is why I prefer Medea to Gaia as a description of this planet.
It also suggests we’re seriously inbred as a species, which I’ll use the next time I’m attacked by a troll. :-)
How AGW was manufactured:
Manipulation of evidence:
I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.
Private doubts about whether the world really is heating up:
The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.
Suppression of evidence:
Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?
Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis.
Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address. We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.
David Wojick
Would you be willing to post what you propose to teach to high schools students? If not why not?
Shorter version of the denialist reaction to the overt politicization of science by scientifically illiterate libertarians with bags of cash and a gaggle of paid-for pseudo-scientists:
“Nothing to see here folks. Move along.”
The double standards, rationalizations, and mental gymnastics in this thread alone would provide enough material for a PhD thesis in psychology.
F**king. Hilarious.
What a prejudiced and stupid statement.
cnp,
It’s a very small ‘gaggle’.
As someone else has pointed out- the bench is really thin.
cnp – “bags of cash”
Thanks to this episode, we now know who’s agenda won the jackpot of loads of billions and who has the teensy-weensy piggy bank.
Personally I have no problem with scientists getting FAR more money that ignorant conservative lobbyists. At least the scientists tend to spend it on actual research instead of hiring political hacks who crank out non-scientific BS by the dollar and who want to be “effective at dissuading teachers from teaching science”.
I have yet to meet a scientist that drives a Aston Martin or a Maserati.
But then, maybe I hang out with the wrong “team”.
ceteras, you bought the fake. Blame the fakers.
David,
Whether the doc in question is a fake is really beside the point.
As Joshua has pointed out below, what’s amazing is the open hypocrisy of defending overt politicization of science when it conveniently favours your prejudices.
If anything has been ‘bought’ it is you, sir.
I am not sure if the wheels are falling off the warmist side, but the lug nuts are flying :) cnp, overt is open. The Heartland has been open about their opposition. Other than the fake document, there really is nothing to see here. Even Andy Revkin thinks the Fake document was a bit odd, since the Heartland hasn’t exactly expressed interest in adding him to their stable. Now who would think Revkin might be looking for bags of cash?
And since Dr. Curry can afford $40 a hour for internet access, I doubt she needs their money :)
Indeed. Because the status of the “fake” document’s authenticity is what’s important about the batch of documents.
Why, if that one document were proven to be authentic, cap’n would have had a completely different view on the issue.
Joshua, If a frog had wings he wouldn’t bump his butt when he hopped :) As a fellow lover of pork belly, I would have suspected you to appreciated the over reaction of the Di-Hydrogen Monoxide crowd to the one document that didn’t appear to match the rest.
Joshua:
And if pigs were proven to be birds, they would be flying over our heads.
cap’n
If it walks like duck, and quacks like a duck, it ain’t no bacon.
From my earliest comments on the topic, I said that document seemed bizarre.
The fact remains, however, that the authenticity or lack thereof of that document does not obscure the blatant hypocrisy I’m witnessing among “skeptics” w/r/t the issue of the politicization of science.
Same old. Same old.
BTW –
If you ever get up to Philly – the absolute best pork belly anywhere on the face of the planet.
http://handynasty.net/
It’s funny how the CAGW zealots now want to claim that the forged document isn’t really relevant to this discussion. Last night, when the issue first was raised, that was virtually all they wanted to talk about.
Their comments on the Climate Change and War thread started here:
http://judithcurry.com/2012/02/13/climate-change-war/#comment-169098
And on the Week in Review thread here:
http://judithcurry.com/2012/02/11/week-in-review-21112/#comment-169068
In particular, the blindly tribal Joshua was beside himself with glee in hopes of showing what a fraud David Wojik was supposed to be:
Joshua | February 14, 2012 at 11:05 pm | Reply
“David Wojick –
‘We are pursuing a proposal from Dr. David Wojick to produce a global warming curriculum for K-12 schools. Dr. Wojick is a consultant with the Office of Scientific and Technical Information at the U.S. Department of Energy in the area of information and communication science. His effort will focus on providing curriculum that shows that the topic of climate change is controversial and uncertain – two key points that are effective at dissuading teachers from teaching science. We tentatively plan to pay Dr. Wojick $100,000 for 20 modules in 2012, with funding pledged by the Anonymous Donor.’
Whaaaa??!!?
You’re being paid to develop a curriculum that will dissuade teachers from teaching science??????!!!!???!?!
Please, tell me that’s some kind of a typo.
Otherwise, it seems to me that we may have a climategategate on our hands.”
But that was then, and this is now. Now, that faked document that suckered them all, and had them doing a Rumplestiltskin style touch down dance, is not really relevant.
Joshua,
“From my earliest comments on the topic, I said that document seemed bizarre.”
Your comments on the two threads from last night are easy to find. I posted a link to them in the above comment. Perhaps you could share with us just one comment of yours that indicated the forged document “seemed bizarre?”
Joshua, there you go with that broad brush again. There are a few hypocrites that take pride in that, but for the most part, it is humorous to most of the skeptics when some people shoot themselves in the foot trying to get cute.
Gary –
Your work to research my comments (including the one that offered a typo as an option) is flattering. But you really need to brush up on your technique. Just a couple of many:
http://judithcurry.com/2012/02/11/week-in-review-21112/#comment-169148
http://judithcurry.com/2012/02/13/climate-change-war/#comment-169330
Joshua,
That’s one, not a couple. And I must admit I missed the last comment you left the end of that night. I took your referring to your “earliest comments” to mean the 20-30 comments you posted in the midst of the discussion before that (your “earliest earliest” comments?), which contained nary a “bizarre” or anything close to it.
You got suckered so I can understand your reticence in owning up to it. Your eagerness to believe the worst about David Wojick is no surprise. Nor is the ability of the more activist progressive CAGW advocates to con a sycophantic true believer like you.
By all means, keep trying to divert the discussion to the supposed hypocrisy of the “deniers” who failed to be duped as easily as you. Maybe nobody will notice how ridiculous your “earliest comments” really were.
Gary – you’re like a walking textbook example of confirmation bias:
There are more examples – both here and at Keith Floor’s.
My last comment on the issue.
“I certainly David can explain how it is simply a typo, and that when he saw it he immediately worked to correct the obviously unsupportable intentions it describes.”
Nowhere any indication that the document itself might be faked. But it was quite generous of you to repeatedly challenge David Wojick to defend his integrity against a document that you now claim you believed was “bizarre” from the start.
It seems to me, if you were the reasonable, laid back progressive, with doubts about the authenticity of the document, rather than a rabid partisan duped by a clumsy fraud, you might have waited until there was at least a response from Heartland, before typing:
“Whaaaa??!!?
You’re being paid to develop a curriculum that will dissuade teachers from teaching science??????!!!!???!?!
Please, tell me that’s some kind of a typo.”
Why ask someone to explain a typo in a document you thought might be forged? I know, those hypocritical deniers made you do it.
“I certainly David can explain how it is simply a typo, and that when he saw it he immediately worked to correct the obviously unsupportable intentions it describes.”
This means that you doubted the authenticity of the document? Okayyyyyyy. Your new found skepticism regarding this patently absurd document is duly noted.
Gary –
And so then, my last comment in response.
I just wanted to note that on top of your incoherent obsession with how my saying that I didn’t think that David would be involved in a project to “dissuade teachers from teaching science” was proof that I thought that he would be involved in dissuading teachers from teaching science, it is particularly beautiful that you have spent this time researching the history of my posts on the subject.
The reason why that is beautiful is because in the past, you have written quite a few comments, laughably addressed to other commenters rather than being actually addressed to me, about how irrelevant you found my comments to be and how they didn’t merit anyone attention or response.
There are many spectacular “skeptics” at Climate Etc., Gary – and while I wouldn’t rank you at the very top of the list, your contributions on this thread have you moving towards the very top like a rocket.
Quick there is a book in this. Mosh, Mosh…
I have a speculation on who wrote the memo.
west coast ( fits the time zone)
uses the word “anti-climate”
misuses parenthesis
mentions himself in the document
doesnt like curry
The Orange Blossom Special, ooh kooka choo choo. Not Cuccinelli.
========================
hehe
Lolwot – please could you explain the intent behind this statement:
“I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”
Go on, give it a go.
crickets
Rob Starkey | February 16, 2012 at 9:36 am | Reply
“David Wojick
Would you be willing to post what you propose to teach to high schools students? If not why not?”
If you were creating an intellectual property you intended to sell would you give it away for free first? If not why not?
David
If David thinks he will be selling the materials to a wider audience he can and should copyright the information, but I doubt that is the case. If his customer agrees (Heartland) there would be no reason not to release the materials.
I am applying the same standard to David as I am to the guy with the bad toupee who claims to be an expert on climate change, but has repeatedly been proven to be wrong.
Sorry, I have been off in the storm. It seems I am famous, with 14 minutes left to go. At this point there is no project, just a proposal. But the idea is to create free Web based resources. Do a Google search on “climate education” or “global warming education” and you will find a host of CAGW resources, many federally funded. There is little or nothing on the debate and I hope to fill that void.
I will be working from my model of the concept structure of K-12 science education. (See http://www.stemed.info). Teaching time is extremely limited in science education, so it will be mostly pointing out the major controversies, as time permits, just a few hours in total at most.
Not having done the work yet I can’t say what these are, but a survey of major Climate Etc. debates would probably answer the question. Natural variability will be the focus, plus data problems. There would also be a unit on climate models, as this is called out by some state standards.
David
Thanks for the answer.
You have already been more forthcoming than the doctor with the bad toupee who claims to be an expert on climate science and reportedly teaches propaganda to high school students
David –
I think that teaching about the debate is a great goal.
Would you mind explaining about how you’re going to teach about the debate, without teaching anything about the “consensus” viewpoint, which you are on record as saying is “not climate science?”
How do you teach about the debate while presenting only one perspective?
Joshua
Please define the “consensus viewpoint”
Rob Starkey – “You have already been more forthcoming than the doctor with the bad toupee who claims to be an expert on climate science”
Hi Rob – I don’t know whether to be flattered or worried by your obsession with me, but the one thing I can say is that in the past six months, during which you have barraged me with innumerable charges of scientific and personal deficiencies on my part (now apparently including my hair), you seem to have managed to maintain a perfect record of getting every claim wrong. If you think I missed something you got right, you’re welcome to repost any assertion you’ve made, and I’ll point out again why it’s wrong. Your problem, as I see it, stems from a combination of fanaticism and ignorance that has let to your misstatements about science and everything else, and apparently to some desperation. It’s particularly apparent today, in that having failed to get the answer you wished from David Wojick, you lashed out at me again. You may not realize how it looks, because if you did, I don’t think you would continue. Any way, that’s my perspective.
At this point, Rob, I have to say I see you as a bit of a loser,but anyone can change, and if you want to be taken seriously, you should try to learn some climate science and demonstrate to others that you’ve become capable of joining into conversations with grownups. Try it.
Fred
David wrote that he has not yet written the materials and that they would be posted. If he has the materials and refused to post them without a valid reason I would react to him as being biased also.
You on the other hand have all the materials and have taught students but refuse to share what you are teaching unless a person agrees not to discuss what you are teaching here. You claim to not be teaching in a biased manner, but refuse to share what you are teaching with those here to demonstrate that you are teaching in an unbiased manner. The point is Fred it is HIGHLY likely that you are teaching in a highly biased manner, but you don’t even see it.
As to a comparison of who knows more between the two of us about climate science and the application of the science in the real world, since I believe your conclusions to be largely unsupportable, I do not see it as much of a contest. You like to discuss the details of issues like radiant forcing while I find the issue to be unimportant to discuss here since the issue only becomes part of a model that has many other factors. You seem to think that having some knowledge of a small part of a large model makes you an expert on the topic. It doesn’t Imo.
I believe it is necessary to have models that mimic observations before they are used to make conclusions. I do not claim to be an expert on the specifics of what goes into a climate or long term weather model, but I do claim to have knowledge of complex model development and use overall.
You have made claims about ocean acidification, and damages due to sea level rise among other things and stated them as facts, and then make statements about how you posted and answered somewhere else when your response has been refuted by someone.
BTW Fred—what claims have I made about you that were wrong?
BTW Fred—what claims have I made about you that were wrong?
Rob – What claims have you made that were right? I’m not talking about differences of opinion that can’t be settled, but about verifiable or falsifiable matters such as statements you’ve attributed to me that either I made or didn’t make (you can even include my hair, although I got a kick out of that new twist). Pick any statement about what I’ve said or attribution about me personally you’ve made in the past six months through today, and if you want to claim it’s true, repost it. You’ve already had to apologize to me a few times in the past for falsely attributing to me statements I never made. Remember?
I don’t think you realize how you come across. Do you really think it wasn’t obvious that your pleading with David Wojick for a description of his teaching was a backhanded attempt to attack me, and that you didn’t get what you wanted from him? Once someone becomes obsessed with finding fault with another person, he’s likely to lose all objectivity and end up doing more damage to his own image than to anything or anyone else.
Why don’t you get over your vain attempts to discredit me, and grow up instead?
Rob Starkey
I second Fred Moulton’s recommendation:
Joshua, I have no idea what you mean by my saying the consensus view is not climate science. Of course it is, as it is the dominant view.
Teaching the debate means teaching all sides. That is what I will do, given the chance, neither more nor less.
David W. –
If I have misread you, then I apologize. Here is the thread of my thinking on this:
You said this earlier:
And here I responded:
You didn’t respond to that comment.
You also said the following:
Now – in these two statements you have called “the vast majority of web content” for teachers “CAGW propaganda” and you have said that your goal is decidedly not to teach what you consider to be “CAGW propaganda.” However, I think that you will find that much of what you will find in web content on climate change is consistent with what is generally referred to as “consensus” view. Thus, by logical extension, as I see interpret what you have said, you do not consider the “consensus” viewpoint to be climate science. And at any rate, “CAGW” is just as much a part of the debate, of the “controversy” as the “skeptical” perspective on the science. If you do not teach about the “CAGW” perspective, then you are not, in fact, teaching about the controversy that you said is your interest.
I fail to see the logical coherence here.
Now let me add, a couple of things. As I said above, I agree with the goal of teaching about the controversy. I believe that doing anything less would be doing a disservice to students and would be inconsistent with a sound pedagogy.
I also want to give you credit for being honest about your political motivations. Having political motivations does not, in itself, mean that you can’t or won’t develop a fair curriculum. Your curriculum deserves to be judged, completely, on its own merits.
My bone of contention is with the reaction of some “skeptics” (I’ve only seen one so far diverge from this position) who have long voiced “concern” about the politicization of climate science, but who don’t seem even the slightest bit concerned with an activist political organization hiring a long-term political activist with sated focus on the politics of the debate, to design climate science curricula for students. My objection is not with you designing the curriculum per se – for all I know you will design a good one (although I see reasons to doubt it based on the statements I excerpted above re: your view of what a balanced approach would be), but with what I see as a hypocritical reaction in response to this news about Heartland contracting you.
Dr. Curry,
I understand why you would consider it necessary to post your views on this matter in the circumstances. But the comments section today contains the least valuable and the most childish set of comments from so many partisan voices since you began your blog.
I look forward to a prompt blog post on another topic, to starve this name-calling of oxygen.
Best wishes for the future.
Regards,
MK
Mark Kantor
While I would agree with you that this is not one of Judith’s most interesting or pertinent threads, I find the remarks interesting anyway.
We have howls of outrage expressed by those who glossed over the much more serious Climategate, etc. revelations, before we even know for sure whether or not the leaked Heartland documents are real.
Max
The so-called strategy document is a fake. That is the one that says HI and I are supposedly trying to get teachers to “teach less science,” which is nuts. Teaching the controversy requires teaching more science, not less. It also requires critical thinking.
In fact the grand challenge is that the concept of scientific controversy is really not taught in K-12, even though it is the dominant ongoing feature of the scientific frontier. It is usually only taught in the context of revolutions and resistance to change, where the winner is known. Galileo for example. Controversy is usually the subject matter of a Master’s thesis. But the climate debate is forcing the subject into the K-12 classroom.
The substance of the thread is not what concerns me, Max. To much of this is conduct in which adults do not engage. I am not a voyeur of flaming. What concerns me is the willingness of so many to use vituperative attacks like these, which are sadly just a sample:
“Like almost everything you write, this is disingenuous … You mostly assume a lot of things that aren’t true.”, “alternate reality … climate zombies,” “ you’re a pathetic liar”, “the most disingenuous putz,” “you are either an idiot, a liar or both,” “your cult,” “describing all climate sceptics liars and scoundrels? Or just …,” “pearl-clutched from their fainting couches,” “You included,” “a low rent, pompous hypocrite,” “Maybe in the future you will be more honest,” “suffers from ‘liars syndrome’,” “dishonest denier scoundrels,” “hyperbolic overdrive with strawmen and let’s face outright lies on this thread,” “Stuff it,” “the quality of being able to amuse yourself with your own fantasies must come in quite handy,” “same absurd lie that is consistent with them all being liars and scoundrels,” “You are intentionally lying,” “He is just a liar and thoguht he could hustle you,” “no longer interested in trying to keep you from looking foolish,” “only pooping in your sandbox when you accuse … of lying. You are hardly someone to be held out as honorable, factual or ethical in this dispute,” “Your ability to twist someone’s words,” “If … is not twisting and deceptively engaging, it is because he is not typing,” “grotesque examples of carbon-piggery hypocrisy,” “ lesser carbon-swine eco-hypocrites who make do, for example, with blow-out, high-carbon swill-slurping (oink! oink! grung-grunt! belch-belch! fahrt-fahrt!),” “calling me a liar makes you a fool,” “people who think “Animal Farm” is a how-to guide book,” “watching some badly medicated person having a heated conversation with thin air,” “You’re a liar,” “the uniformity of the hypocrisy,” “What alternate universe do you live on,” “you are a phony,” “utter deceit,” “baseless claims ,” “totally unconcerned about the cheating and corruption of their team,” “Liars and fools are always resting a case they never made,” “a depth of first hand knowledge about fools and liars that could only come from intense personal practice ,” “content-free post. Good to know that your standards haven’t changed one iota,” “that poor bastard who pretends to be …,” “You come across as an idiot,” “his own pompous ways,” “most deeply intellectually dishonest person would claim that … doesn’t come across as a propagandist,” “You’ve already taught me most of what you can,” “I again challenge you,” “the vocal cant of a true believer,” “You have a delusional view of yourself,” “You clearly haven’t given this subject a lot of thought,” “you’re a board baffoon,” “it’s a form of dishonesty,” “your 3rd grade reading comprehension level, “ “Another bedwetting denizen,” “fantasy,” “panders all the time,” “you just don’t understand science. That’s your problem,” “toe to toe”, “don’t stand a chance,” “you come across as foolish,” “using a red herring to make false choices,” “Check for your credibility while you’re there,” “you really are a low brow,” “Fluent gibberish,” “let those who can read, understand. I am sorry you can do the former and not the latter,” “You’re a boor”, “sock puppet,” and “prejudiced and stupid.”
Oh, and “It means a lot to me.” I have only heard that snark before from pre-teens.
Well, now, Mark. Aren’t you curious to hear Fred speak? And to hear what more he could teach us?
Civil, it ain’t; militant, it is.
===============
“To[o] much of this is conduct in which adults do not engage.”
I must have grown up and lived in another world. I see Democrat congressman on the floor of the House of Representatives accusing conservatives of wanting to kill children and old people. Climate blogs filled with charges that skeptics are equivalent to holocaust deniers and should be tried for war crimes. Forged documents claiming a conservative advocacy group wants to stop high school teachers from teaching science.
Maybe you could point me to the planet where adults are always nice to each other when debating issues on which the future of the world economy, or world climate (depending on your “side” in the debate), depend.
And there is lot of dishonesty going around, the document at the heart of this very thread being a case in point. So if you rule out calling out a lie or forgery for what it is, you give a distinct advantage to the dishonest.
The believers are losing this one- badly- and are trying to call for a tie, or to pretend that this is all to ugly to discuss any further.
hunter,
You’re calling the wrong game.
On the science – the denialists don’t have a dog in that fight.
But yes, when it comes to PR stunts, politicisation, propaganda and bunk, you guys are way, way out in front.
@Wojick
You mention the phrase “teach the controversy” and say that requires teaching more science, not less. I hate to paraphrase Slick Willy but that depends on what the definition of science is. The intelligent design creationist battle cry is “teach the controversy”. Not sure if many people here knew that. I’m wondering if you did. At any rate the evolution defenders pretty much took the position that creationism isn’t science so teaching the controversy in that case isn’t teaching more science it’s teaching less science because teaching ID creationism takes class time away from legitimate science. Given this whole climate controversy is recapitulation of the evolution debate with the teams chosen from the same sides of the culture wars I expect that will be the canned rejoinder to your position that teaching the controversy involves teaching more science. Once science is settled about things like the universe formed from a meaningless random dance of atoms, there is no God, and catastrophic anthropogenic global warming is happening, that means teaching different is non-science. Cute, huh?
Mark Kantor
Re: “What concerns me is the willingness of so many to use vituperative attacks”
You correctly observe the state to which “climate science” has descended. Your quotes are but a sample of the language used by climate alarmists. See Climategate emails and the frequent use of the pejorative “denier”.
Mark,
Well, it seems I’m one of those whose words are quoted by you as examples of “…conduct in which adults do not engage…” (love that lofty, nag-butt, “adult” touch, Mark–truly an exemplar of manufactured eco-priggery!).
So what could possibly stir you, Mark, to such a high dudgeon?–I mean, certainly you’re not seriously concerned about “adult” conduct. Right, Mark? Maybe it’s more along the lines of a little greenshirt intrigue that has kinda, you know, just lately “blown-up” in the faces of certain “adults” of the watermelon persuasion and has left them flailing for an “adult” response. You know, like, maybe, Mark, what’s really going on is that your pecksniff appeal for mature discourse is really just a desperate distraction. You know, a little “trick” (used in the technical, scientific sense of the term, of course) designed to keep the “deniers” at bay while the “team” figures out how it can get its collective, “adult” doom-butt, that has just been handed to them, re-fitted. You, know, like “rem ad Triarios redisse” and all that sort of “adult” good stuff (you seem like a Latin-slinging sort of guy, Mark, so I hunted up that last little “adult” quote just for you–Hey! I’m tryin’!).
And speaking of “adult” lanugage, here’s some of that sort of thing provided by our betters in 2009, just before the Copenhagen conference:
“We musn’t be distracted by behind-the-times, flat-earth, climate skeptics…”–Gordon Brown, then Prime Minister of Great Britain
“The approach of climate saboteurs [said in reference to sceptics]…The sceptics are playing politics with science in a dangerous and deceitful manner.”–Ed Milliband , then Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change
And then, of course, we have the ubiquitous use of the truly repellant and scurrilous term “denier” (and its variants) in the climate science debates by “adults” despicably exploiting the term’s subliminal resonance with “holocaust denier” for cheap agit-prop advantage.
So kinda late for the party, Mark, with your let’s-be-adults! pitch, wouldn’t you say, Mark?
Getting back to the suject at hand: funding of scientific inquiry.
Where & How a particular group is funded is of some interest (in the political sense), but this is purely tangential to the crutial scientific quest.. Just how is the “whole truth” supposed to emerge?
If one position on a scientific problem is funded lavishly, how are other viewpoints to emerge?
Where funding is needed to do serious science, how do we expect that funding to be provided? From what source?
And, regardless of the source of funds, I would expect the conclusions and source documentation be available to any cridtable scientist who wants to independantly analyze the result.
Jeffrey –
Absolutely right.
The ‘opportunity cost’ of AGW is not just to be measured in money. It’s in the climate science that would have been done if AGW had not stolen most of the time, money and scientific resources. We might now have a much better understanding of natural climate, its cycles and changes and complexities, if AGW had never been born.
Cui Bono
However, AGW was originally pursued with private funds. It was not getting very far, until it was pushed by people who started the IPCC. The charter states that the IPCC would organize the science and promote that which beecame “AGW”. They would not pursue the ‘natural science’ per se, unless it promoted the preconceived ideas put forth by the people in charge. This effort was political from the start. I do have some experience in this (around 1976, or so) when I was working for industry as an Environmental Engineer and working on ‘smoke stack’ effluent patterns.
But, aside from the politics, I am interested in the science that backs it up. Empirical Science that is in the public domain.
Generally speaking, a pennyworth of truth is more effective than a pound’s worth of lies.
The lesson from Greece is that when the AGW Catastrophism establishment warns that you better keep funding the Government-Education Complex if you know what’s good for you or cities will burn, they mean that literally and it is government toadies who will be tossing the stick matches
More and more we see that the obvious becomes… obvious: it’s the sun, stupid—e.g., “it is only with such solar amplifiers that one is able to explain the synchronicity between the sun and the temperature, with at least a 1°C pulsating climate development, over the last 10,000 years.” Sebastian Lüning and Fritz Vahrenholt (the German authors of “Die kalte Sonne”) in a guest post on WWT
the XMP toolkit used to generate the fake pdf was:
“Adobe XMP Core 5.2-c001 63.139439, 2010/09/27-13:37:26 ”
The XMP toolkit used to create one of the elements of desmog-fracking-the-future.pdf was:
“Adobe XMP Core 5.2-c001 63.139439, 2010/09/27-13:37:26 ”
steven,
Your kung fu is excellent as always.
Sorry its not all me. a bunch of folks are looking at this. This particular bit, comes from terry S. Also, time zone weird on the docs .
Possible
Bzzzaaappptttt. Back to the shop for another vacuum tube.
====================
Mosh
How suprised are you regarding the sea level trend? I don’t mean 2012 alone, but the 20 year trend.
Mosh and Rob
The sea level trend should be compared over an entire century, for example, using a consistent method and scope of measurement.
There is only one such method: the tide gauge record taken at various shore lines (exactly there where sea levels mean something to us land dwellers).
These records show significant decadal swings but no real change in the rate of sea level rise over the past 100-150 years.
The problem arises when we introduce (as IPCC has done) a new method of measurement (satellite altimetry), which also measures a totally different scope of measurement, i.e. the entire ocean, except for polar regions and regions near coastlines, which cannot be measured by satellite altimetry.
The problem is exacerbated when we compare one time period using one method of measurement and covering one scope with another time period using a different method and covering a different scope, as IPCC has done in AR4 WG1 to suggest a late 20th centuiry acceleration in sea level rfise (caused by AGW, of course).
This is bogus science at its worst.
We now witness (oh horrors!) that the rate of sea level rise has dropped significantly.
Duh!
The long-term tide gauge record showed us that decadal fluctuations in the rate of rise are the norm (not an aberration).
How silly can we get?
Sea level is doing about the same thing it has been doing for the past 150+ years, with or without an increase in human CO2 emissions.
Max
Google gives me over 100,000 hits on that particular Adobe .dll file:
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4LENN_enUS461US461&q=%22Core+5.2-c001%22
Quick Mosh, call McIntyre and get the odds on that calculated.
David,
The .dll number isn’t a big deal. That the install or initiation time/date of the XMP Core is exactly, exactly, the same is a big deal.
Can you find any other examples on the web? Except for being from the same computer, can you offer another explanation?
There are others, of course. I use the UN’s IPCC in one corner and heartland’s NIPCC in the other. I read both. I ‘believe’ neither. The science that has been articulated is not convincing – from either ‘side’.
Look, this is a very complicated subject that affects all areas of the world and it needs careful deliberation to get at the root cause to determine what is causing the changes we can ‘see’.
I DON’T THINK THE ROOT CAUSES HAVE BEEN YET DETERMINED!
So, this ‘debate’ reminds me of when I was an officer aboard a merchant vessel, far out at sea. When I wanted to hear the news, I turned on my short wave radio. I listened to two stations – Voice of America, and Radio Moscow. I knew that neither of them was broadcasting the ‘truth’, but I would find it somewhere inbetween.
Such is the case with Global Warming!
Jeffrey, what you say is a skeptical argument.
David, dare I say “all good science starts with a skeptical arguement”? That does not make me a scientist (good or not), but i do have a love for the Scientific Method!
And, I can read — so I try to understand.
Jeffery,
Please step calmly away from your caps-lock key, and read some actual scientific pubs on the subject.
This isn’t about two equal but opposite “sides”. One “side” has scientific evidence in the public domain to back up their position, the other has no credible evidence, no public accountability, and a policy position derived from an unquestioning acceptance of the musings of Milton Friedman.
The whole “fair and balanced”, “teach the controversy” thing is getting awfully tired.
ceteris no paribus writes “This isn’t about two equal but opposite “sides”. One “side” has scientific evidence in the public domain to back up their position, the other has no credible evidence”
But which side is which The proponents of CAGW have absolutely no observed data to show that adding CO2 to the atmosphere does anything at all; least of all cause global temperatures to rise. There is lots of observed data in the public sector which shows that for the last 15 years or so, global temperatures have not risen at all; despite a massive increase in the amount of CO2 in the atmopshere.
Yes, one side, the skeptics, has massive amounts of observed data in the public sector which tends to show that CAGW is wrong. The proponents of CAGW have no oserved data whatsoever to support their hypothesis.
Jim, I think you overlook a large amount of science (peer reviewed, of course) that supports CAGW. However, little of it pertains to the question of “why”. Like, “why has the temperature increased?” Since Callendar, do you know of any scientific empirical study that addresses this question?
However, they do have a lot of research concerning their Global Circulation Models. But, that is not empirical!
cnp,
You are right:
The IPCC has become a corrupted insider game ignoring peer review literature, is strongly influenced by big green NGO’s like Greenpeace and WWF who use the IPCC to raise funds. The IPCC is not run by ethical standards that provde for transparency and arm’s legnth assessments.
Skeptics point this out, but true believers like yourself seem to have the fallacious idea that skeptics have to provide alternate theories, not point out failures of the AGW consensus.
The believer mentality can be summed as one that holds fast to the idea that ‘fake but accurate’ is a valid way to develop evidence. The hysterical own goal behavior over the Heartland documents demonstrates this rather well.
Such a tempest in a teacup.
But c’mon, let’s throw the Warmistas a bone here, let them have a few days of faux glory basking in the glow of FakeGate.
They have had such a bad time since ClimateGate 1 . . . Copenhagen was a disaster, the planet won’t follow the predictions of their infamous climate models, the IPCC has been exposed as a stinking pile of Eco Greenie infiltrated corruption. lies deceptions and fraud, carbon trading has collapsed, the Polar Ice caps are still ice caps, the Himalayas still have glaciers and the most wonderful thing of all is that children in England actually get to experience snow.
So let them have a couple of feel good days digging their grave ever deeper.
It is nice little diversion for their battered & shattered ego.
Except they are feeling good at my expense. As the fellow said after being tarred and feathered and rode out of town on a rail, if it were not for the honor of the thing I would have just as soon walked.
David
I hpoe you see this. Would you be willing to post what you plan on teaching so as to demonstrate that it is unbiased?
Rob, I responded above. See http://judithcurry.com/2012/02/15/heartland/#comment-169983
I plan to teach the debate, which means the basic arguments between the AGW/CAGW proponents and the skeptics, starting around fifth grade. The real challenge is how to do this using only the concepts they have learned so far, in each grade. I would think that anyone here could tick off the basic issues, but the issue tree is my secret weapon, since I know how issues are structured.
”
– but the issue tree is my secret weapon, since I know how issues are structured.
”
The “issue tree” – That sounds so darn science-y.
What about “the architecture of problems”? – or “the epistemological connections between residual concerns”?
Or shall we just cut to the chase and go with “standard talking points”?
ceteris non paribus
“Jeffery, Please step calmly away from your caps-lock key, and read some actual scientific pubs on the subject. This isn’t about two equal but opposite “sides”. One “side” has scientific evidence in the public domain to back up their position, the other has no credible evidence, no public accountability, and a policy position derived from an unquestioning acceptance of the musings of Milton Friedman. The whole “fair and balanced”, “teach the controversy” thing is getting awfully tired.”
First of all, I’m a retired American Engineer, the name is Jeffrey
Second, I use caps infrequently, so I did get your attention after all….
I have been studying “Global Warming” intently ever since the AR4 was published (have you read it?) and have the following two questions on the top of my plate. Maybe you could answer?
1) Please point me to a credible recent empirical scientific study that concluded that rising atmospheric temperatures are the result of increasing CO2, (Calendar is not recent) and
2) Since we know that water discharges gasses when heated, how can the earth’s oceans be both rising in temperature and decreasing its pH at the same time? If you point to CO2 partial pressures, please affer a formula which combines them both.
I have an open mind and am seeking the ‘truth’ whatever it is. I am a life-long conservationist.
Thanks, keep your response focused on the science. ad-hom is not acceptable.
Jeffery:
Since you claim to be a life-long conservationist with an open mind, I’ll play.
1)
Try:
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm
or, more specifically,
Lean and Rind (2008)
Stott et al. (2010)
Huber and Knutti (2011)
2)
The simple answer: atmospheric CO2 concentration is rising.
See:
Caldeira et al. (2003)
Jacobson, M.Z. (2005)
ok,ok, uncle!
I am reading your #1 and realise it will take a lot of time. I am familiar with all of the stuff up through Callendar and will need to read the more recent stuff. I will start by Googling Huber & Knutti (wait for it)…ok, got it.
Unfortunately, Huber & Knutti are talking about a result from a Global Circulation Model (“We use a massive ensemble of the Bern2.5D climate model of intermediate complexity, driven by bottom-up estimates of historic radiative forcing…”).
I was asking for an empirical study.
c’mon, if you are going to play, play fair.
next?
If Huber and Knutti (2011) doesn’t float yer boat, then have a look at:
Harries et al. (2001)
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v410/n6826/abs/410355a0.html
Unfortunately the full text is behind a paywall…
Wait…
https://workspace.imperial.ac.uk/physics/Public/spat/John/Increase%20in%20greenhouse%20forcing%20inferred%20from%20the%20outgoing%20longwave%20radiation%20spectra%20of%20the%20Earth%20in%201970%20and%201997.pdf
And the Harries et al. paper cited by ceteris non paribus has been updated: see
Chen et al. and references therein.
There are also a number of studies that reveal trends in downwelling long wavelength radiation associated with greenhouse gases. This article gives a nice discussion.
Pat,
Thanks for the links.
cnb
Well, I tried Huber & Knutti – not empirical.
Stott et al. discusses TOA radiation, but not the link between CO2 and temp.
your second point that atmospheric CO2 is rising – I get it. Keeling told me.
But, please give me a link between CO2 and temp, and please use one that is empirical…
Thanks.
Remember, Ad-hom is not allowed here.
I think we need to start some kind of support group for those who mis-use the term ’empirical’.
Michael writes “I think we need to start some kind of support group for those who mis-use the term ‘empirical’.”
We know what “empirical” means. It means when someone goes out an measures something, and puts error bars on the number. Then someone else makes similar measurements, and the two sets agree within the error bars. Then you have empirical data.
Jeffery:
Normally, I wouldn’t bother with a repetitious request for citations – I assume that you have an internet connection and that you are perfectly capable of finding information all by yourself.
But I’m feeling good today – So, look here:
http://agwobserver.wordpress.com/2010/02/18/papers-on-co2-temperature-correlation/
If that doesn’t satisfy you – Sorry, not really my problem.
cnp – glad you are feeling good today. I have checked more than a few of your references and NOT ONE of them is a reference to the natural science of Global Warming attribution. Instead, they are referencing TOA radiation, or a set of parameters that are in a Global Circulation Model. these are important, but they do not address my question to you.
So, I guess you don’t have the reference that can help me understand the causal relationship that rising atmospheric CO2 CAUSES a corresponding rise in atmospheric temperature. Just take the last 15 years as an example – how can you possibly state that CO2 is influencing temperature? YOU CANNOT EXPLAIN IT! And, as Trenberth said “it is a travesty that you can’t”!
@JEG
Stop looking. You are chasing rainbows.
There is no actual evidence that rising CO2 warms the atmosphere. There is a hypothesis that it might/should. And there are some graphs that seem to show that at some points when CO2 is rising the temperatures go up. But at others when the CO2 is pretty stable, the temperatures rise anyway. And sometimes (like now) the CO2 is still rising and the temperatures are pretty static
So there is actually no more than a weak correlation between CO2 and temperature, let alone any proof of causation. It is not a matter of science to believe it, but a matter of faith.
My best guess is that those most certain in this belief have never studied an experimental science. And so think that if an effect can be demonstrated in a lab it will necessarily apply as it scales up zillions of times from bench scales to whole world size.
While those of us more sceptical have the experience and scars to know that such an idealised ‘model’ is rarely a true reflection of what really goes on. And that there’s a lot more going on in the climate than this.
Max, you rite “There is no actual evidence that rising CO2 warms the atmosphere”
Well said, Max. As I put it, there is no CO2 signature in the temperature/time graph. None whatsoever. However, JEG is on our side. It is CNP who writes garbage.
Jeffery:
”
NOT ONE of them is a reference to the natural science of Global Warming attribution
”
Really? Gosh – Uncle! Uncle!
Do me a small favour in return for my failed efforts?
Please inform the global scientific community that you are not satisfied with their research. I’m sure that the news will make you very famous.
And good luck with that ‘open mind’.
CNB
OK, got through another of your references….this time it took me almost no time bacause the article was shortened. If I wanted to read more, I needed to purchase the book. This is very strange, cnb, you reference something that isn’t available to the public without paying a fee. Are you acting as their agent? i understand people must make a living, but most of the time I refuse to pay. For instance, I do not have a subscription to “Science”, do you? Most academics use the institutional subscription because they do not have sufficient funds to purchase themselves. Scientific articles should be made available to anyone, for free, for their personal use.
Oh well…just some more obstructionalism I suppose….
Jim Cripwell is correct.
There is absolutely no correlation between Co2 and temps.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Co2-temperature-plot.svg
And Jeffery is correct too.
I have failed to deliver him from cognitive dissonance – Therefore climate science is false!
Yay! Pat each other on the back – and break out the champagne, guys!
CNP. Please forgive me for being imprecise. The data from hundreds of thousands of years ago shows a correlation between CO2 and temperature, but it is the wrong way round. First temperature rises, and then some 800 years later, CO2 rises. So CO2 is cannot be the cause of the temperature rise.
What I should have said is there is no CO2 signature in the modern temperature/time graph; i.e. the data we have since 1850 or so.
Ceteris
I told you no Ad-homs allowed.
Puleeze!
Jeffery:
Please take some time to learn the difference between an “ad hominem” fallacy and sarcasm.
Not the same.
Jim:
You are forgiven.
Since the tired old “CO2 lags temperature” meme is dragged out so often – I will drag out the standard corrective:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-lags-temperature-intermediate.htm
CNP. I notice you have not challenged my claim that there is no CO2 signature in the modern temperature/time graph. But which I assume you agree I am absolutely correct. You brought up the ice core data, which I think is irrelevant, but let me pursue it a little further.
The claim of the proponents of CAGW is that the temperature rise for the 30 years or so at the end of the 20th century, together with the CO2 rise over the same time period, is indicative that rising CO2 levels cause rising temperatures. The error in measuring time from ice core data is so large, the order of decades, that such data cannot possibly provide any insight as to whether the hypothesis behind CAGW is correct or not. So it does not matter whether Skeptical Science is right or wrong. It tells us nothing about whether CAGW is right or wrong.
Like most here, I find this whole thing ludicrous. The amount of green funding actively supporting the AGW agenda is orders of magnitude greater than anything we’re talking about here. Moreover, was it some sort of secret that the Heartland Institute is privately funded? How else are they supposed to operate?
From their website:
” Funding: Approximately 1,800 supporters support an annual budget of $6 million. Heartland does not accept government funding. Contributions are tax-deductible under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.”
I’ll readily cop to the fact that this is an area about which I don’t know a lot. Can someone explain to me why they’re so outraged?
All that said, it seems to me that individuals ought to admit upfront they’re getting paid. Otherwise, fairly or not, they’re leaving themselves open to criticism. If I’m Anthony Watts, I’m pretty sure I’d want to make it known upfront that I’m getting “x” amount of money for “y” project.
Climate science is not AGW funding, AGW came out of the science funded.
The Heartland funding is lobbying and spin, designed to eliminate science for its own political and other interests and beliefs. That is, it is NOT science, which starts with the data and draws conclusions.
Noty like the AGW scamers. They drew a conclusion and then managed the data.
ceteris non paribus
Harries et al. doesn’t “float my boat” at all, since it ignores a key portion of Earths energy balance: the shortwave portion.
It’s the WHOLE energy balance that counts, not just one piece.
Max
CNP
This isn’t about two equal but opposite “sides”. One “side” has scientific evidence in the public domain to back up their position
I completely agree, there is absolutely no doubt about the correlation between increasing CO2 ppm and recent global mean temperature change
See here
Gras
Correlation is not pertinent. What we want is causation, with empirical evidence.
Your link doesn’t work, anyway.
Try again, please.
”
Correlation is not pertinent. What we want is causation, with empirical evidence.
”
Empirical evidence will only ever supply correlation or the lack of it.
Causation is not observable, it is a relation of entailment or logical implication. No one can ‘observe’ a proposition.
Try again, please.
cnp, Causation or attribution as to why the earth’s average temperature is rising is IMO the crux of the matter. Gras was pointing me to a graph from “Wood for Trees” which clearly shows a negative correlation between temps and CO2. Since AGW has as a main point that rising CO2 causes a rising temp, why is it so difficult to find the scientific study that corroborates this?
I mean, really — I;ve been at it for a while now. None of the examples you sited was sufficient for me to take the plunge. I am looking for the ‘smoking gun”. When will I have the “aha” moment???
Please excuse my ignorance, but I would think mere correlation does not answer the question “why?”..
Jeffery:
Do you really think that nature gives a sh*t that you don’t understand ‘why’ things happen?
Do you really think I should feel at fault because you haven’t had a personal “aha moment”?
I could give you with plenty of refs to the measured spectral properties of CO2, the measured fact that the atmospheric IR window is not saturated by CO2, empirical evidence that anthropogenic emissions are causing a substantial fraction of the measured increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration, and evidence that other natural factors are insufficient to account for the last 50 years of increased global temperatures.
But we both know that I would be wasting my time.
It seems that you are just another in a long line of retired American engineers who thinks his lack of knowledge and insight is meaningful.
Frankly, I could not care less about your ignorance, much less excuse it.
Hey there Ceteris, back up against the wall?
Your rant does not say anything regarding the temp/CO2 link, amazing!
Actually, I do trust that atmospheric CO2 is increasing (albeit slowly), so your citations to how much CO2 is anthropogenic (“a substantial fraction”) – IS NOT THE POINT (I couldn’t help myself).
I do have some credentials in atmospheric sciences, having worked for a decade or so as an Environmental Engineer, most recently for IBM. But, I suspect you are not interested.
Now, cnp, I told you no Ad-hom attacks — I am “just another American engineer” with a lack of knowledge and insight. Actually, I am just a citizen who is very interested in the IPCC led process of Global Warming.
And I seem to be getting nowhere with you. I actually agree with you that I am ignorant about this, but not because I have not tried. You are my current case in point – an AGW adherant who cannot give me the information I am seeking. So, I’ll try somewhere else.
Thanks for the effort, though. Have a nice day.
Or even here, http://tinyurl.com/7frlflz
Gras, sorry – I thought you sent the graph to show a correlation…tongue in cheek!
This is what I call a “null hypothesis”
ha ha, ok, now I get it.
I’m just too serious most of the time….
That was my expectation too…
It certainly is a correlation ;)
An awful cross to bear, worse, to bare.
================
I’ve just received a document slipped under my door, obviously leaked by an IPCC insider. In it they describe their climate strategy for 2012:
1. Make sure the AR5 keeps the government funded climate research gravy train flowing by claiming ever greater imminent catastrophes to be caused by CAGW, while omitting any use of the word catastrophe.
2. Defend every attack on the evil climate deniers, even the use of forged documents, to divert the public’s attention from the constant coordination and manipulation of media by Media Matters, Think Progress, Real Climate and other public relations organs of the US Democrat Party.
3. Continue doing everything we can to restrict the publication of skeptical articles in the numerous climate journals we effectively control because the stupid voters might start thinking for themselves when we try to help our political patrons take control of the world energy economy.
4. Schedule our future meetings in Jamaica, Cancun, Monte Carlo, Rio de Janeiro, and other common vacation spots of the oppressed poor, to show just how in touch we are with the impact destroying the energy economy will have on their insignificant lives.
I know the document is authentic because it says the IPCC published the AR4, spelled Michael Mann’s name correctly, and notes that the UN building is located in New York. So it has to be real.
No replies because no sense of humor about this topic…
The correlation is less obvious but still clear if one goes back further, http://tinyurl.com/85kweuf
CNP, WHT, lolwot, Fred Moolten,
Have you thought about what you’re going to do after?
Gras, now you that is because of the underestimation of the impact of volcanic aerosols. Seems volcanoes get underestimated all the time.
Two images suffice to demonstrate your mistake
http://tinyurl.com/6vgs8gj
http://tinyurl.com/6r7z79z
I only need one to illustrate yours
http://tinyurl.com/6v92blc
That pesky CO2. Here’s a thought…..the world has been in economic crisis since 2008, and here in the US we have reduced our carbon footprint (yes, it actually declined) and the same can be said for Canada, Germany, Japan, England…and others (Greece?). So, here is the question for the day:
Why has the CO2 graph continued its upward climb almost exactly like nothing has changed for the past 3 1/2 years? Look at the slope of the average….has it dropped, just a little? Can China be the culprit?
Hey – You’re on to something there, Jeff.
The Chinese have been so darn busy making cheap toasters, play-stations, and flat-screen TVs for Americans that they have totally forgotten to export the carbon footprint that goes along with them.
Ceteris
And, along with all the CO2 being pumped into the atmosphere, the Chinese have decided to forego the SO2 scrubbers for the coal fired electric plants (one new one each week), that the atmospheric temperature is stable because of it. How they are looking out for us!
Other than this quote,
His effort will focus on providing curriculum that shows that the topic of climate change is controversial and uncertain – two key points that are effective at dissuading teachers from teaching science.
Which looks very much like a fraud there is very little that even looks inappropriate. The public funding blindspot maintained in leftist blog space is far more offensive.
Andy Revkin wasn’t too impress with the blurb that he might cultivated into a mouthpiece for the Heartland. Andy said he is uncultivated :)
capt.,
That was one of the tells that the doc was a forgery.
One hopes it would tell Andy something.
=======================
I think a very large nail has been driven into the coffin of the 2012 Climate Strategy Document. See:
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/02/leaked-docs-from-heartland-institute-cause-a-stir-but-is-one-a-fake/253165/
and
http://www.kochfacts.com/kf/confrontingfalsehoodsheartland/
Megan McArdle’s analysis seems pretty logical.
Even though she concedes to believing that humans are making significant change to our climate, she has concluded that the alleged key Heartland document is a fake.
I don’t believe we’ve heard the end of the story on this.
It is so absolutely stupid to throw in a fake document.
All of the hundreds (?) of op-ed authors who gleefully jumped on this story will have egg on their faces if and when the story of faked evidence gets wider circulation (which it undoubtedly will, as it looks today).
No matter that there may be other non-faked documents. It’s the fake one that will get all the publicity.
What idiots!
Max
I noted in passing numbnuts claim again that the PDO peaked in the 1980’s and has declined ever since. As the ‘decline’ is in fact a shift between cool and warm modes – the ‘decline’ is rather the point. Here is an image showing a La Nina and the current cool PDO – the 2 are related.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:La_Nina_and_Pacific_Decadal_Anomalies_-_April_2008.png
Try this one – http://www.pnas.org/content/107/5/1833.full
Note that it is not about the PDO – but about Pacific and beyond effects and only uses the PDO as a proxy. I know you think I am making this up numbnut – but why would I bother.
There was some discussion of Harries and later replications. Harries used a model of ‘brightness temperature’ on one axis rather than power flux as such. There is no ‘notch’ in the Earth emissions as the atmosphere is warmer with more CO2 and the energy in then re-emitted. Here is the TOA power flux data.
http://isccp.giss.nasa.gov/projects/browse_fc.html – look losely at TOA graphs and albedo.
‘The overall slight rise (relative heating) of global total net flux at TOA between the 1980’s and 1990’s is confirmed in the tropics by the ERBS measurements and exceeds the estimated climate forcing changes (greenhouse gases and aerosols) for this period. The most obvious explanation is the associated changes in cloudiness during this period.’ NASA/GISS
Here is the data from CERES.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/albums/k538/Chief_Hydrologist/?action=view¤t=CERES-BAMS-2008-with-trend-lines1.gifc
Again the changes were mostly in the SW.
The planet has not warmed since the climate shift in 1998/2001 which was associated with abrupt albedo change – cloud change. Here is another way of looking at it. – http://www.bbso.njit.edu/Research/EarthShine/ –
The planet is not likely to warm for another decade or 3 – which is what the peer reviewed science is saying in Keenleyside et al, the reference above, Tsonis and colleagues. Smith et al suggested otherwise – but it is not looking good for them. The reason has to do with cloud changes as a result of variability in Pacific sea surface temperature. The cloud changes in response to Pacific SST is uncontroversial – e.g. Dessler 2010, Clements et al 2009, – links and other references found here – http://judithcurry.com/2011/02/09/decadal-variability-of-clouds/
Robert I Ellison
Chief Hydrologist
Here’s the problem in pictures:
Skeptics think of the PDO working something like this:
http://tinyurl.com/86h4bwe
The top horizontal line represents the period where the PDO is considered to be in “warm phase” and skeptics assume that over this period the PDO acts as a kind of heater, increasing the temperature of the Earth.
Then suddenly at some point, here in 2000, we switch to the lower line where the PDO goes into it’s “cool phase” and skeptics assume that now the PDO switches to being a cooler and so for decades, until it goes back into a warm phase, it will decrease the temperature of the Earth.
This mechanism means that a decline of PDO from +2 to +1 doesn’t have a cooling impact on the Earth, because the PDO is still positive and so it’s still in it’s “warm phase” acting as a heater warming the Earth. It’s only when the PDO crosses the magic zero threshold that it is supposed to switch to a role of lowering global temperature.
That’s quite a contrived model compared to the very obvious and simple alternative (apart from the alternative that PDO has negliable impact on global temperature). The alternative simple model that skeptics overlook is that the PDO index is directly proportional to the total warming or cooling contribution by the PDO. Under this simple model a PDO index drop from +2 to +1 represents a cooling impact on global temperature. PDO has to go up to warm the Earth and has to go down to cool it.
So why do skeptics go for the contrived model rather than the simple one?
I think the reason is twofold.
1) Mainly it’s because skeptics have conflated “cool PDO phase” with “coolinging effect” and “warm PDO phase” with warming effect. Also the idea of the PDO having a warming effect through the 80s and 90s and switching to a cooling effect in the 00s fits what they want to believe, so two is:
2) Because they like what the contrived model shows, they see no reason to look at alternatives. Also if they do they won’t like the result as it you carry the simple model to it’s logical conclusion, you find that since 1980 the PDO hasn’t contributed to global warming but has actually had a cooling effect.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/jisao-pdo/from:1980/plot/jisao-pdo/from:1980/trend
Also this would imply, given how low the PDO has now reached, that the PDO cooling is about to end.
What makes all this worse is that skeptics dismiss positive feedbacks in climate like water vapor feedback which have actual evidence going for them and believe in this PDO astrology BS.
Numbnut,
The difference is between warm water on the surface in the north east Pacific and cold upwelling. These states – as in Pacific Decadal – tend to persist for decades. So if we are in a cold phase now it seems likely to persist for another decade or 3. There is a fast atmosphere response as less energy is lost from a cool ocean surface and the atmosphere continues to cool to space. There is a slow effect from cloud feedback effecting the global energy dynamic.
Try this one – http://jisao.washington.edu/pdo/
I can’t imagine why you choose to ignore peer reviewed science and respected sources to indulge in rhetoric and persist in a less than adequate understanding. The science here is immensely broad – denying the science exists is a problem that will lead to misunderstanding of the climate dynamic – what causes the natural variation – and a derailing of the political political and social impetus to meaningful policy objectives.
Of course – the latter is code for pissant progressives can eat sh…
Robert I Ellison
Chief Hydrologist
Or maybe some clever skeptics looked at the global temp record over the last 100 years and noticed that as the PDO index turns sharply negative, global temps fall. As the PDO index goes sharply positive, global temps rise. The PDO is a process of wind, currents and heat transport. It does not heat or cool the oceans but changes in the PDO index do affect changes in the instrumental record that we interpret.
lolwot said, “What makes all this worse is that skeptics dismiss positive feedbacks in climate like water vapor feedback which have actual evidence going for them and believe in this PDO astrology BS.”
Still trying to give skeptics a bad name :) Most skeptics don’t dismiss much. Water vapor is a feed back both, positive and negative. It is neutral with shifts positive and negative in the tropics, positive in the mid latitudes and more positive in the higher latitudes where it is a factor. Note that there is no feed back in the Antarctic. The PDO circulation distributes heat were can escape more easily, cool phase or retain more heat warm phase. In the process, it changes the cloud patterns, the warm phase widens the tropical belt and the cold phase narrows the tropical belt. This changes the cloud reflection of shortwave, narrow reflects more heat and the longwave feedback, lower average cloud height which is a negative feed back.
If CO2 and water vapor were both linear forcings, the warming would be more consistently spread by latitude. That is why observations differ from the models, http://redneckphysics.blogspot.com/2012/02/models-versus-observations.html
Arrhenius also missed the water vapor feed back, he predicted warming would be greatest near the tropics, ain’t happenin’
http://redneckphysics.blogspot.com/2012/02/arrhenius-is-still-dead-but-his-mistake.html
Even G. S. Callendar said Arrhenius over estimated CO2 impact. Twice as much as a matter of fact, funny how the trends seem to be about half of what the models predict, ain’t it :)
Then both of those guys based their estimates on what they assumed were average temperatures. Nobody has that good of an estimate of what average is really. That is why the little Ice Age now has renewed interest, with volcanoes the new culprit. It is a pretty dynamic system with lots of variables.
Cap’n –
Just who are these “skeptics” of whom you speak? Perhaps Rick “AGW is a hoax” Santorum?
Joshua, Santorum is a politician. The first rule of understanding politician’s is, “if their lips are moving, they are lying.” The second is that they have colorful ways of using metaphor when moving their lips in the direction of their intended marks, er. voters.
“The place where he was, in my mind, the most successful and first successful was in academia. He understood pride of smart people. He attacked them at their weakest, that they were, in fact, smarter than everybody else and could come up with something new and different. Pursue new truths, deny the existence of truth, play with it because they’re smart. And so academia, a long time ago, fell.”
Translation: Knowledge does not equal common sense.
What a presidential candidate says to get into office and does when is in office are rarely the same thing. Mainly, because most of what they promise they won’t have the power to accomplish. Clinton ring a bell, Carter, Bush, Bush, Obama?
cap’n –
You seem to have missed my point.
I honestly don’t need a lecture from you about politicians. Believe me, I have no misplaced trust in the integrity of politicians.
I reacted to your statements about “most” “skeptics,” and how they “don’t dismiss much.”
Not only is Santorum a politician, he is also a “skeptic.” And his diatribe about Satan and academia is not altogether a different animal than much of what I have read from “skeptics” on the topic of academia. That is why I asked you whether or not his comments had a familiar rink to you. I’m not saying that all that many “skeptics” use religious terms in describing academia. His diatribe is certainly not identical with much of what I’ve read from “skeptics” on academia, but that there is a similarity to the basic demonization (interesting choice of word) of academia. Certainly, you have read some of the threads where “skeptics” bemoan the loss of academic integrity, the “denial” of truth, the “elitism” of academics, the fall of academia; i.e., many themes that resonate with Santorum’s comments.
Well, Joshua, don’t bring some politician into the conversation. Skeptics of the science of climate change have issues with the overconfidence of the scientists in their modeled results, issues with the selective use of data and the unrealistic inclusion of small probabilities.
I am working on a Siberian tree ring proxy for the Agricultural impact thing of mine. The data was cut off in 1970 because the scientist decided it diverged from temperature at that point. It diverges a number of places. That is part of the information. If he worked for me he would be job hunting. That is a real problem.
While I am working on Siberia, I added a AMO reconstruction and am building a volcanic reconstruction. There is a pretty obvious volcanic impact on the temperatures. Now, after what thirty years of alarmism, the Little Ice Age is theorized to have been cause by volcanic forcing. Hmmm?
There are other volcanic episodes, 1815 1910, 1950 and 1970 that had impacts on the northern latitudes.
There are good reasons to be skeptical of climate science Joshua and good reasons to think that some warming is not a bad thing.
http://redneckphysics.blogspot.com/2012/02/even-more-calibrating-imperfection.html
The chart is hard to read, but it looks like about half of the northern hemisphere warming is related to agricultural expansion and recovery from volcanic cooling. Neither are bad things in my opinion.
“most skeptics don’t dismiss much”
Indeed, most don’t dismiss anything at all…specifically, anything which coincides with “it can’t be humans.” It could be the sun, it could be cosmic rays, it could be clouds, it could be negative feedbacks, it could be instrumental bias, it could be PDO, it could all be a big conspiracy, we might not even be releasing the CO2, it could be cherry-picking short-term trends, it could be completely misinterpreting the data or using outdated data. The crazier ones will go on about how “back-radiation” doesn’t even exist, or other sorts of things about how there is no greenhouse effect.
It doesn’t really matter because ‘skeptics’ aren’t interested in what the answer is or how climate works, just throwing potshots at climatologists and work that they’ve never read. Maybe a dozen or so on the internet have made it to the Bachelors of Science stage in atmospheric science. Not one has a peer-reviewed article that successfully refutes the idea that humans are causing most of the modern climate change.
Of course they’ll disagree. They’ll fingerpoint at Mann or something else irrelevant. A casual onlooker might ask why they should believe one side over the other. The true test in science is really who has published in the scientific literature and to what extent that work has stood the test of time, and how it fits in with what thousands of other papers have. showed. At this point it’s tough to even ask them to use data because they don’t usually understand the data. When all you have is blog articles and conspiracies it makes it tough to sound serious.
Colose, You are getting more unhinged as you progress in graduate school. You used to be so reasonable. Skeptics are a varied lot just like scientists. Some are clearly out to lunch, some have great contributions to make. Generalizing about them is a little prejudiced.
David,
I’ve heard every one of the arguments for why global warming isn’t happening, why it can’t be CO2, why the CO2 can’t be big of an effect, etc. Meanwhile, dozens of papers a month are coming out in journals like Science, Nature, GRL, JGR, Journal of Climate, etc. Meanwhile, real scientists are still “debating” interesting topics that show promise of advancing our understanding of the Earth. They do this at university seminars and academic conferences.
Meanwhile, I’ve had much more interaction with scientists and professors as I progress into my research who work countless hours a day. I find it insulting to have juvenile bloggers think they are all ignorant or liars based on no training in the subject. It’s insulting, really. It’s arrogant. It’s demeaning to think people can look things up on a blog for a half hour, maybe draw a few lines through data, and think they’ve overturned decades of understanding. And yes, I have progressively less patience for it.
“Meanwhile, I’ve had much more interaction with scientists and professors as I progress into my research who work countless hours a day. I find it insulting to have juvenile bloggers think they are all ignorant or liars based on no training in the subject. It’s insulting, really. It’s arrogant. It’s demeaning to think people can look things up on a blog for a half hour, maybe draw a few lines through data, and think they’ve overturned decades of understanding. And yes, I have progressively less patience for it.”
Translation, I only work and socialize with people who agree with me, and the more I do, the less I am willing to even listen to anyone else. As fine a description of the process of falling into hardened group think and systematic confirmation bias as I have ever read.
The globe is cooling, Chris; for how long even kim doesn’t know. The concatenation of cooling phases of the oceanic oscillations suggests cooling for a couple of decades. The sun’s diminuating demeanour could suggest cooling for a century. Warmth would be a good thing. May we have some please, and may the guilt be made better use of?
==================
@ Chris Colose,
Yes of course, we are all keenly aware that the only REAL science happens within established academia with properly published journal papers, properly peer reviewed by accredited experts in the field… except maybe for that wild eyed young telephone worker and his luny ideas about alternating current and wireless technology, or that crazy frenchman and his preposterous “germ theory”. Then there was a German immigrant to England, a mere musician by profession who charted the heavens for the first time, the Swiss patent clerk with the wild hair and indecipherable chalkboard equations, the skinny kid doing physics experiments out on Woolsthorpe Manor who wasn’t published until 22 years later.
No Chris, it is clear that none of these discoveries would withstand the rigorous academic processes of today because these skeptical amateurs all lacked the required background in their area of study. They could not possibly have been doing REAL science. I see your point now.
Yes, ivpo, real science is done within the academic literature and through discussions at scientific conferences, etc. You might not like that, and it might not mesh well with the romantic idea of a rebel who could never get published and then went on to make a radical paradigm shift. Happens a couple times a century maybe, and is progressively rare in the modern era as communications and data processing have become far more efficient, and as fields have become far more specialized. The romantic version is called TV science, or high school perspective on the history of science; it’s not how science really progresses in any practical way.
The “Galileo” type arguments used by skeptics are just a device they have created to 1) avoid doing any actual research and submitting it to an arena where you can’t just make things up, unlike on blogs, 2) to reinforce their ideas of a ‘gatekeeping’ process by the very broad scientific community.
Chris C, Just consider some of the bloggers here as expressions of the “overflowings of liberty” and if they don’t have a real point, just ignore them. My issues are succintly discussed on the ergodicity thread. You would do better to consider the arguments of skeptics who are sophisticated, such as Judith, Muller, Lindzen, and those of us like me who know the theory and practice of solving nonlinear chaotic problems where we at least know the answer thanks to careful experiments. Look at the ergodicity thread for some comments on the models, conservation of energy arguments, and excessive dissipation. You will find it more stimulating. I don’t get upset anymore by some of the flamers on the other side here like lolwot, Dirken Marsupial, and JCH. They are almost always wrong and not interesting so I just ignore them in most instances. Now people like Fred and Web are good to argue with.
Colose, The issue here about science is about the process. Science can never advance when the current doctrine is just accepted because everyone seems to agree. Science advances by constant challenge and skepticism. Skepticism is not always right, but the process of taking it seriously is critical to progress.
Chris Close said, “most skeptics don’t dismiss much”
“Indeed, most don’t dismiss anything at all…specifically, anything which coincides with “it can’t be humans.” ”
You have the same broad brush as Joshua. What can or cannot be dismissed depends on its significance at different time periods which is the major problem with figuring out a dynamic system.
The medieval warm period was a regional event. The Little Ice Age was a more global event. Both though, had greater impact in the higher northern latitudes. The warming today is mainly regional, northern hemisphere higher latitudes with global impact. CO2 should play a role in the difference, but approximately 10% of the land surface area in the northern high latitudes has been transformed into farm land since the little Ice Age, it likely plays a role also. CO2 does not create energy it only returns or retains energy. So it would amplify the impact of the farm land transformation.
I don’t think that is denying anything Chris. I think CO2 only dismisses other impacts by man. You are over simplifying the issue which is more of a problem than recognizing the complexity.
cap’n –
Once again, please note, I excerpted a quote from a notable “skeptic,” and pointed out how there were similarities between that excerpt and many things that I have read from “skeptics.” It is what it is, and I don’t think that you could refute my point. I’m quite sure that you have read many similar comments on many threads which are similar to the quote I excerpted w/r/t a dismissal of such an incredibly vast entity as academia.
Now I excerpted that quote in reference to the following statement of yours:
So who is painting with a broad brush, cap’n?
Next, you’re going to tell me that “most” “skeptics” have no problem with the politicization of science?
Oh.
Wait.
No bacon for you.
Joshua, To quote Clinton, “It depends on what the meaning of is, is.”
“Most skeptics don’t dismiss much.”
Judith had a post on classifications from believers to deniers. Skeptics were in the middle and could lean either way. I consider a “skeptic” to be someone that weighs the evidence before coming to a decision.
Your brush is broader :) I did lobby to the pigeon hole Albedoist, but got stuck with skeptic or rejectionist. Skeptics, the true skeptics, would like more narrow categories.
Your group and Chris Close’s group is much more encompassing than my group, hence, “the Broad Brush”.
So what should be the categories? Convenced – Skeptical – Not Convinced.
Under Convinced and Not convinced you have thinkers – followers and wackjobs. Under Not convinced you have thinkers – followers and wackjobs. Under skeptical, you only have thinkers and wackjobs, but which is which depends on the final out come :) The likelihood of most skeptics being something is greater than the convinced and not convinced groups, because of the lack of followers. Most skeptics, whether thinkers or wackjobs still think and they think there is more to climate than CO2. “Most Skeptics don’t dismiss much”, is valid.
I get your bacon today.
cap’n –
Sometimes I refer to skeptics, and sometimes I refer to “skeptics.”
Take note.
Your access to bacon will depend on it.
Chief
You’ve posted some interesting stuff.
In particular, I was interested in the “deviations of monthly mean values of various components of the radiative fluxes reported in the ISCCP-FD analysis (Zhang et al. 2004)”
The LW and SW flux data at TOA are particularly interesting, because (unlike some of the recent studies out there) they cover both the LW and the SW portions.
The LW flux shows a gradual increase from 1980 to today (including a 2001 jump explained below), but the global total (LW + SW) net TOA flux does not show any apparent real change (net increase 1980-2000, net decrease afterward).
The graphs of LW, SW and total fluxes for TOA in the tropics and global, plus global upwelling and downwelling fluxes at the surface are accompanied by a series of notes that explain a lot. (I’ve copied them below, adding italics for emphasis.)
“In the first row, the slow increase of global upwelling LW flux at TOA from the 1980’s to the 1990’s, which is found mostly in lower latitudes, is confirmed by the ERBE-CERES records. However, the sudden increase in upwelling LW flux in late 2001 may be exaggerated because it is associated with a spurious change of the atmospheric temperatures in the NOAA operational TOVS products that are used in the calculations. ”
“The effects of spurious changes in the atmospheric temperature dataset can be seen even more clearly in the variations of the upwelling LW flux at SRF because the TOVS variations introduce spurious variations of the surface temperatures retrieved from the satellite infrared radiances in clear scenes. Most of the variations in this figure can be associated with changes in the TOVS product. ”
“Many, but not all, of the large variations of downwelling LW flux at SRF are also associated with changes in the atmospheric temperature dataset used in the calculations: the downwelling LW flux is more sensitive to these changes that is the upwelling LW flux at TOA.”
“In particular the general slow decrease of LW flux from the beginning of the record until 2000 is not likely to be correct nor is the sudden increase in 2001. ”
“In the second row, the prominent peak in upwelling SW flux at TOA at around 1992 is caused by the volcanic aerosols from the Mt. Pinatubo eruption; the large values at the very beginning of the record may be due to the remnants of the El Chichon volcanic aerosol. However, the magnitude of the upwelling SW flux perturbation is exaggerated in these calculations (as shown in the comparison with ERBS) because the aerosol effect is included explicitly by using the SAGE II stratospheric aerosol record in the calculations and implicitly through the ISCCP cloud properties, which were not corrected to account for the extra aerosol.”
“The sudden decrease of upwelling SW flux at TOA near the end of 1988 and its generally lower values until the end of 1994 (except for the Pinatubo event) may indicate a low bias of visible radiance calibration for NOAA-11; calibration of this satellite against the other polar orbiters was made difficult by the Pinatubo event. ”
“There is a brief increase of upwelling SW flux at TOA at the end of 1994 that appears to be caused by a high bias in the visible radiance calibrations of some satellites for a few months when no “afternoon” polar orbiter was available to normalize the calibrations.”
“The overall slow decrease of upwelling SW flux from the mid-1980’s until the end of the 1990’s and subsequent increase from 2000 onwards appear to caused, primarily, by changes in global cloud cover (although there is a small increase of cloud optical thickness after 2000) and is confirmed by the ERBS measurements.”
“The variations of upwelling SW flux at TOA are shown in terms of planetary albedo variations in the last figure. The main variations in the upwelling SW flux at SRF are very muted versions of the features in the upwelling SW flux at TOA except for the sudden decrease in the last couple of months of data: this appears to be an error and is being investigated. The features in the downwelling SW flux at SRF mirror those seen in upwelling SW flux at TOA.”
“In the third row, the planetary cooling events (negative global total net flux at TOA) at the beginning of the record and around 1992 are very likely real, if exaggerated in magnitude, and caused by volcanic aerosol events. The cooling at the end of the record is probably exaggerated because of the inhomogeneity of the atmospheric temperature dataset used for the calculations.”
[Then comes the paragraph you quoted.]
“The overall slight rise (relative heating) of global total net flux at TOA between the 1980’s and 1990’s is confirmed in the tropics by the ERBS measurements and exceeds the estimated climate forcing changes (greenhouse gases and aerosols) for this period. The most obvious explanation is the associated changes in cloudiness during this period. ”
“The variations of the total net flux at the surface reflect the variations in the upwelling LW flux for the most part. Although some smaller magnitude features may be realistic, the larger variations are likely to be spurious (except for the Pinatubo decrease). “
[And finally.]
“The total net fluxes in the atmosphere (positive values imply heating) are also mostly distorted by the spurious changes in the atmospheric temperature dataset.”
What does this all mean?
Most importantly (IMO) is the last sentence, which attributes a good part of the apparent increase in net fluxes (resulting in net heating of the atmosphere) to “spurious change of the atmospheric temperatures in the NOAA operational TOVS products”.
Then comes the statement that ”The overall slight rise (relative heating) of global total net flux at TOA between the 1980’s and 1990’s is confirmed in the tropics by the ERBS measurements and exceeds the estimated climate forcing changes (greenhouse gases and aerosols) for this period. The most obvious explanation is the associated changes in cloudiness during this period”.
This tells me that ”changes in cloudiness” have most likely been a major contributor to the ”relative heating…between the 1980s and 1990s”
This seems to confirm the ISCCP observations (Pallé et al.) that the global monthly mean cloud cover decreased by around 4.5% between 1985 and 2000, contributing to a significant decrease in the Earth’s global albedo. http://bbso.njit.edu/Research/EarthShine/literature/Palle_etal_2006_EOS.pdf
The same study shows that over the period 2000 to 2004 the cloud cover rebounded by around 2.5%, with an increase in reflected SW radiation.
Could this have been a major cause of the past decade’s “lack of warming”?
How have these cloud changes tied in to ENSO or PDO fluctuations?
After going through all this stuff, it still seems very nebulous to me (not being a climate scientist or meteorologist), but I suspect that you have some thoughts on how it all hangs together.
Max
Hi Max,
The surface data is irredeemably dodgy – the TOA data less so – and CERES less so again. Palle in an earlier paper used an earlier version of ISCCP to horrendously misleading effect. The quality of data is not strained – but it is what we got. These all show that cloud is the dominant factor in energy change at TOA. There is independent data from the Big Bear Solar Observatory showing cloud change at the end of the millennium. this seemingly had a role in the observed non-warming
Clouds? Here is something I did last year – http://judithcurry.com/2011/02/09/decadal-variability-of-clouds/ –
It is the energy imbalance at TOA that determines whether the planet is warming or cooling – between TSI and outgoing energy.
Robert I Ellison
Chief Hydrologist
Chief,
Which numbnut are you referring to?
There is more than one.
The one who responded – he is very well trained even responding to name and I presume is house trained but would not quarantee.
Meanwhile, document and writing analysis is putting Peter Gleick at the top of a short list of potential “Fakegate” memo authors. This stuff gets more interesting every day.
Links?
Go to Lucia’s its my theory.
I wonder if the fact that Gleick was involved with a recent flame war with a Heartland blogger might be additional circumstantial evidence?
http://blog.heartland.org/2012/01/taylor-vs-gleick-battle-royale-that-gleick-will-be-sorry-he-started/
The paragraph in the memo. Note how it tries to caste Gleick as the center of their policy.
Note also that whoever scanned the irs 990 needed a copy.
Gleick had one.
See my stuff on lucias
steven,
Very interesting.
Gleick has a pattern of faking things for the cause.
Mosher produces innuendeos, then hunter stupidly takes his bait and commits libel. Not bright of you, hunter.
Holly,
dont you find it weird that the heartland institute devotes the entire meat of its strategy to the fact that Gleick got an editorial in Forbes.
And yes Forbes is the place that Gleick admits he has the HI 990.
The HI 990 was scanned in west coast time zone.
HI is in chicago.
The smoking memo was also scanned west coast time.
weird.
And then there are The tweets using the weird phrase ‘anti-climate’
a word we find repeated in the smoking memo.
Then there is the writing style, especially the weird use of parenthesis.
Now, when Mike Mann speculated in his book that Mcintyre was connected to the hack because of the time zone he lived in.. you said nothing.
Holly,
In America truth is a justification for the defense.Gleick’s review of Donna’s book is so distant from the facts as to have made many people reasonably conclude he did not read it.
And my opinion of what a public figure does in the public square is not libel.
But I will take your legal advice in the spirit in which it was offered and thank you for your kindness.
Holly,
It’s about as credible as Mosher’s theory that Briffa leaked the climategate emails. And of course it begs the question.
Looks like my reasoned speculation of a ‘disgruntled middle-aged loner’ from yesterday upthread http://judithcurry.com/2012/02/15/heartland/#comment-169757
is still a runner…………
Surely a mispront
‘disgruntled middle-aged loser’ is better.
I suffer badly with old joke syndrome. I’m a martyr to it.
First law of motion:
The velocity of a body remains constant unless there is change in the external force on the body.
First law of climate science should be:
The global mean temperature trend remains constant unless there is change in the radiative force on the globe.
Data shows there has not been any change in the radiative force on the globe since record begun in 1850 => http://bit.ly/Aei4Nd
Girma – I’m not picking on you just to find fault, but I think you would appreciate knowing that your statements are wrong. In the presence of a constant force, a body will accelerate. In the presence of a constant climate forcing, the temperature will change until a new steady state is reached.
Fred Moolten
Your lecture in Physics 101 to Girma is fine, but you have missed one key point.
F = m*a
But how big is “F”?
And (oops!) how do you define “m”?
OK. Let’s forget about “a” for now.
So now we take this simple (but very powerful) formula and attempt to apply it to something as complex as our planet’s climate.
And let’s oversimplify things by assuming that there is only one really significant “F” – and that is coming from added atmospheric concentrations of GH gases coming from human GHG emissions (a gigantic leap of faith, which would get us into serious trouble with a whole bunch of solar scientists, who would tell us we are simply “nuts”).
But let’s soldier on bravely.
Next, let’s look at what has happened to GHG concentrations (let’s simplify again by only considering the most important GHG, CO2, since our models tell us that the others are all cancelled out by human aerosol emissions). Whew! That was easy.
Then let’s do what Girma has done: look at the actual physical observations.
Now I know that “actual physical observations” are not the strength of “climate science” (as it is currently practiced by IPCC), as this methodology prefers climate models fed with theoretical assumptions in order to arrive at desired results – but let’s try it anyway.
Girma’s observations of the temperature record show something strange: a pattern of indistinguishable multi-decadal warming and cooling cycles, resembling a sine curve with an amplitude of around +/-0.25C and a total cycle time of ~60 years, all on a tilted axis showing an increase of around 0.04 to 0.05C per decade.
Yet CO2 shows no such oscillations, but a very gradual increase until the end of WWII, with a fairly steady exponential increase of around 0.4 to 0.5% per year since then.
But F is supposed to equal m*a – or as you have verbalized this for our planet’s climate:
Why didn’t it work out that way in real life?
Could it have been because the “F” from natural factors, some of which have an oscillating trend, was greater than the “F” from human GHG emissions?
Or could it even have been that the “F” from human CO2 emissions is so small and insignificant that it is completely overshadowed by the “F” from natural factors?
These are questions which neither you nor anyone else can answer satisfactorily today.
So, instead of trying to give Girma a basic instruction in physics 101, it might behoove you to think outside the box of the paradigm in which you are stuck and consider other possibilities.
Give it a try, Fred, it’s not that hard.
[It’s called “scientific inquiry”.]
Max
Thanks Frank.
I was wrong.
What I was trying to say is does not climate change require change in the global mean temperature trend?
I don’t see any change in the global mean temperature trend since 1850.
http://bit.ly/Aei4Nd
Max – What would I do without you around to help me understand?
I mean climate change “after mid-20th century”
Thanks Fred Moolten.
I was wrong.
What I was trying to say is does not climate change require change in the global mean temperature trend?
I don’t see any change in the global mean temperature trend since 1850.
http://bit.ly/Aei4Nd
Girma, that trend probably goes back to 1816, the year without a summer.
This is Girma’s data as a not clinically-insane person would graph it:
view climate science module 1
Max,
That was nuttier than a sack full of squirrels.
WHT
When you plot gistemp and hadcrut3 on the same graph, you need to match the gistemp data with hadcrut3 by removing the offset and detrend as follows.
http://bit.ly/zsw9ob
WHT
If you do that, your graph will look like this: http://bit.ly/yWpUaN
Afraid not. It would look like this
WHT
In that case your references are three different trend lines as shown => http://bit.ly/ySmSyM
Always glad to help, Fred.
Cheers,
Max
Fred, I don’t mean to pick on you but if I apply a constant force to my automobile its acceleration doesn’t go on forever. That’s because it isn’t accelerating in a vacuum. The earth’s surface isn’t forced in a vacuum either, Fred. Try thinking these things through a little longer before voicing your thoughts.
A cogent analysis:
http://greenpolicyprof.org/wordpress/?p=790
“UBC was fortunate to have Bill McKibben come visit and give a series of talks in November. I had breakfast with him in a small group and challenged him on all of these factual issues. What was immediately apparent is that he understood all of the criticisms, but was simply working from a different logic about how to maximize political opportunities.”
That’s the name of the game. The difference between maybe 2 degrees and likely 4 degrees is huge. I tend to think anything over 3 due to anthropogenic gases is extremely low, with 1.5 reasonable with normal volcanic activity. If I were an advocate, I would say AGW is a hoax, because you to have to start at the extremes in political negotiations. There is nothing new in politics.
Joshua –
‘A cogent analysis’
I don’t see this at all in that piece. He starts well enough by describing the three camps, but then completely dismisses the ‘climate skeptic’ side by invoking a cartoon characterization. As a result, Hoberg only discusses the relation between ‘climate policy analyst’ and ‘climate advocate’. Not much balance in that analysis, I’d say.
Worse, Hoberg finishes by throwing himself in the advocacy camp whilst trying to wrap himself in the mantle of an ‘analyst’. Personally, I find it a good example of an unfortunate mindset – that one can be a partisan advocate but still claim objectivity.
As an aside, I find the tone of this piece to be very accepting of the politicization of the climate debate. Could you comment on that, and why you are not condemning Hoberg for this?
That analysis is a sad joke. He dismisses skeptics, implies that Canadian tar sands could increase CO2 by 200 ppm, and believes that extreme action called for by the AGW community is the only solution.
If this sort of thinking is what you see as reasonable, no wonder you dodge and weave and evade discussing what you actually think.
The smoking gun has left a trail, a drift of smoke…an acrid smell,
A posse here, at Anthony’s and at Lucia’s blog,
Are following the trail.
A forgery has left some clues, time dates and places
Don’t add up, and strange anomalies of style.
Some cowboy’s shaking in his shoes, (boots.)
[Cowboy Refrain.]
” Where,oh where, can I hide the gun,
(When the Anti Climate posse come?)
Here at the OK Corral, there’s gonna be
A shootout soon.
(And it’s almost High Noon!”)
DeSmugga daBlogga
Dey jumpa da sharka,
But dey forgotta
Ta buckla da saddla.
==============
The long, long trail of deceit in government science traces back almost to the time when President warned of this danger in January 1961.
Compare the January 1998 video of NASA belatedly releasing isotope data from the Galileo probe of Jupiter (above) with the video (below) made thirty-seven (37) years earlier of former President Eisenhower warning of the danger to our form of government if a federal “scientific-technological elite” ever took control of policy.
You mean it’s two days in and you AWG morons don’t get that you’ve been HAD? Childish forgery. Bush memo’s all over again (almost as bad as the WORD FONT and “Kerning”, if you don’t know what that means…get a life and an education.
Maybe I need to get out a version of my Grandfather’s “Strontium 90 strainers” he made bucks with during the 50’s and 60’s. (A wire loop, with NOTHING in it). He explained they strained on the ‘molecular level’ and purified your milk. only $2 each! I could sell “ozone shields”, or AWG “insurance”. Yeah, that’s the ticket: “If it becomes too hot to live/work, we’ll pay for your relocation to a colder climate. Like AK. Complete with a tourist guide to Sarah Palin’s neck of the woods. (Suntan oil and palm trees optional.)
Joe,
“fake but accurate” is an acceptable tactic for the righteous in fighting the wicked denialist scum.
I Think Mr.Green did it in the Computer lab with the Epson scanner. Or Mrs. White did it in the Hall with the lead pipe. Or Ms. Scarlett did it in the Lounge with Professor Plum.
Judith Curry said: “The funding that Watts is hoping to receive seems to be in a different category: he is looking for private funds for a specific project, rather than to be on a monthly retainer such as the others…. Personally, as an academic, I religiously steer clear of such funding (not that any of it has ever been offered to me, other than travel funds to attend an event); it compromises your appearance of objectivity.”
I find it personally somewhat reprehensible (and elitist) when academics demand that money from private sources for research be declared as a “conflict of interest”, but that money coming from government or universities need not be labeled as a “conflict of interest.” I would never blame any individual researcher for adhering to this policy as it seems to be standard. Still, it would be refreshing to begin see a selection of academic researchers of high integrity begin naming their sources of funding (no matter what they are) as conflicts of interest uniformly (whether from government / university or elsewhere). For example, a conflict of interest could be listed some such manner (after prettying up for university consumption):
CONFLICT OF INTEREST
Grant money of $xx,xxx was received from the United States Environmental Protection Agency, an agency whose political funding depends, at least in part, on widespread perception of threat to the environment. Departmental support in the amount of $A was provided by the Department of X at the University of Y, a department charged with the responsibility of finding potential problems with atmospheric blah blah blah.
Max Phillis,
You’re saying government funding is just as tainted as private or corporate funding? There is no reason why either should be if the funding process is completely transparent. No scientist would refuse funding from either source unless their integrity was compromised in the process, and most would certainly welcome a greater contribution from the private sector.
But would increased funding from private sources prevent criticism of findings which weren’t acceptable to sceptics? Almost certainly not. The recent BEST project was funded by a mixture of both and yet the results were still challenged by those who didn’t like them. It didn’t make any difference.
Tempterrain:
> You’re saying government funding is just as tainted as
> private or corporate funding?
Yes, clearly it is.
> There is no reason why either should be if the funding
> process is completely transparent.
Says who? Just because funding is transparent doesn’t mean the funding isn’t ideologically tainted. If a researcher is transparent and discloses funding for his research (say it’s from Exxon Mobil or Greenpeace) in a conflict of interest statment, this isn’t going to raise flags with anyone?
> No scientist would refuse funding from either source
> unless their integrity was compromised in the process…
Judith Curry didn’t say she would refuse funding from the Heartland Institute because it would *actually* compromise her objectivity. She said she would refuse it because it would compromise the “appearance of objectivity.” So apparently, you are wrong.
> But would increased funding from private sources prevent
> criticism of findings which weren’t acceptable to sceptics?
I don’t really care one way or the other. I just think funding from government or university should be disclosed as a conflict of interest, just as funding from industry is regarded as such, *particularly* when it comes to conducting research having political ramifications, such as the issue of climate.
Looks like the “Heartland story” has had a good run here, with the usual side tracks coming from both sides (me included).
And it now looks like some of the “leaked” documents were “fakes”, so the attention is shifting to “whodunnit?” and “were they accurate, even if faked?” deliberations.
As much as the “leaker” and those who jumped on the story might have hoped it would become a new “Climategate”, it has turned out to be a “poof!”
[Interestingly, this non-story got immediate attention from the media and a whole gaggle of CAGW cheerleaders from Joe Romm to Chris Mooney – while Climategate remained a non-story until Steven Mosher and Thomas Fuller wrote their book and some mainstream media outlets reluctantly began reporting it.]
But let’s look at the background.
There can be no doubt that Climategate hurt the CAGW cause.
The revelations of IPCC exaggerations and outright lies in its AR4 report also didn’t help – one US poll by Rasmussen showed that 69% of the public thought climate scientists falsified data.
The internal and external “investigations” were perceived by many to be whitewashes, which also did not help,
Politically Copenhagen, Cancun and Durban were disasters for the cause, as was the US Congress scuttling “cap ‘n tax”.
Worst of all, it hasn’t warmed in 11 (or 15) years, despite CO2 rising to record levels, with CAGW pundits scrambling for rationalizations.
So the whole “Heartland brouhaha” is a diversionary tactic, an effort to get people’s minds off the many recent failures of the CAGW cause by finding a new “big money funded” bogeyman to bash.
Is it working?
I’ll let you guys (and gals) be the judge.
[My vote says: “NO”.]
Max
.
“Worst of all, it hasn’t warmed in 11 (or 15) years, despite CO2 rising to record levels, with CAGW pundits scrambling for rationalizations.”
The stupid, it hurts.
Michael,
Tell us all about your pain.
OK.
My poor eyeballs are screaming from having to read dim-witted dross like this;
“Worst of all, it hasn’t warmed in 11 (or 15) years, despite CO2 rising to record levels, with CAGW pundits scrambling for rationalizations.”
Michael,
Tell that to our hostess. I am certain she has comforting words for you.
Has anybody ever seen Joshua, Martha and Michael in the same room together?
hunter,
No need to. Judith knows you can’t extract a significant long-term trend from 11 years of data.
And her comforting words would be – ‘that’s right’.
Michaeil
Who said anything about a “long term trend”?
(Just another one of the “rationalizations” I wrote about.)
Max
Good morning, Max:
Not only is it not working, it’s turning out to be a major own goal – the fast established label “FakeGate” emphasises that. You say it “looks like some of the “leaked” documents were “fakes”. A bit more than that, I suggest: I believe this article (http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/02/leaked-docs-from-heartland-institute-cause-a-stir-but-is-one-a-fake/253165/) by Megan McArdle, senior editor of The Atlantic. Her detailed and forensic analysis of the “2012 Heartland Climate Strategy” document is especially convincing as she makes it clear that she disagrees “pretty strenuously with Heartland’s position on global warming”.
Nonetheless, some warmist cheerleaders are not giving up. For example, Suzanne Goldenberg had another story in the Guardian yesterday evening (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/16/heartland-institute-fundraising-drive-leaked?INTCMP=SRCH) describing Heartland as “free market thinktank behind efforts to discredit climate change and the teaching of science in schools”, supported by this extract from the fake document: “the topic of climate change is controversial and uncertain – two key points that are effective at dissuading teachers from teaching science”.
Maybe the paper’s editors still think it’s genuine. Or perhaps they don’t care so long as they can continue to publicise the calumny.
I should have said “I believe this article … by Megan McArdle … establishes that.”
Hi Robin
Yes. I read Meg McArdles detailed analysis.
I would agree that there is no doubt that the cited “Heartland document” was a fake.
(It just shows how utterly stupid this whole brouhaha really is.
Cheers,
Max
Scene 2 of ‘The Smoking Gun.
‘Lights brighten. Sound of horses ‘hooves.
Long shot ,3 men wearing ponchos and mounted on tall horses slowly ride into town. Panning shot of people hurrying indoors, slamming doors and closing shutters
Newcomer in town: ‘Who are those three dudes?
Oldtimer: (Spits.) ‘No one’s gonna knock them hombres out of no saddles. They’re the two Steves and Clint.”
N in T: ‘The first dude, is that Steve Mosher?’
OT: ‘Yup.’
N inT:’The next one………..Steve Mac?’
OT:’Yup.’
N in T: The next one…he couldn’t be Clint Eastwood/’
OT: ‘Yup.’
N in T: That damn ass cowboy’s got no hope!’
OT: ‘Nope.’
Close up of the twitching face of cowboy,Eli Wallach look alike.
Sound. Music theme from” The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.”
owlCl
G’day Beth,
I’ve been over at the Ergodic Ranch and French Patisserie all this time rustlin’ up stochasticities and dynamical complexities. Now there are some you say that a cowboy has no place even sayin’ such things – but I have it on good authority that lonesome is just part of the iconic nature of being a cowboy – and that a cowboy can say any damn thing they like if’n it expresses the untold vicissitudes of their soul.
I rode into town on my blue horse /a> – Fakegate out of Climategate – and you caught my eye straight away and I asks myself what’s a strong cowgirl like that doin’ in a place like this? ;-)
There seems to be a hell of a ruckus goin’ on at this here corral/brasserie. Who’s winnin’ do you know? Is anyone keeping score? Does anyone outside of the circle jerk care?
If’n you don’t mind – I might just pull up a chair, line up the Jack Daniel’s sippin’ whiskey and sing you a maudlin cowboy love song.
Eyes like the morning star, cheeks like the rose
Beth was a pretty girl, God Almighty knows
Chorus:
Weep all ye little rains, wail, winds, wail
All along, along, along the Colorado Trail
Beth was a laughing girl, joyful all the day
Beth was a darling girl, now she’s gone away
Chorus:
Bright all the lonely night, bright all the day
Keep the herd a’rollin’ on, rollin’ on its way
Chorus:
I hope you don’t think I’m forward or nothin’ – but perhaps you’d care to come out ridin’ with me come Sunday after church. You can have my spare horse – you just have to be careful ‘round pissant progressives so’s you don’t get splashed.
Until Sunday then.
Robert I Ellison
Chief Hydrologist
Chief,
You are a fantastic cowboy. Keep up the good work and thank you for posting here again.
Happy trails,
Dear Dr Curry,
At the end of your post you ask ‘how have the sceptics been so successful with relatively little funding’? My answer would be that we have truth on our side. It takes a lot of money and effort to promote propaganda especially in a free country. Big Lie theory says that you need to repeat the lie very often to start to convince people or at least break down their natural questions. This costs a great deal of money. However for it to work you need to pretty much completely exclude the truth which will very quickly cause people’s natural questions to come back up. This is practically impossible to do with a freely available internet. So my answer would be that the availability to almost anyone to investigate CAGW ‘science’ has meant that the biggest propaganda effort in history was always going to fail. So it is less that sceptics have won some kind of battle but that individuals have uncensored access to information (including your own excellent blog). This is now somewhat under threat from SOPA etc because the powers that be prefer control than freedom.
giga,
Maybe, just maybe, it’s the other way around.
It costs a bomb to launch satellietes and do world-wide ocean monitroing etc, you know, science.
On the other hand, you can pay $140,000 to some guy to write a NIPPC report and have credulous people spruik it on the intertubes for nuthin’.
Dishonesty is cheap.
Nah. No-one living in the Western world in the last 5 years can fail to have noticed the *massive* media campaign promoting CAGW theory, and fail to notice that it didn’t work. Why (this was the question remember not the science which has been done to death already)? IMO it is because people started to question just a little and then had an easy way to investigate and even express their findings, the internet. Of course this is an exponential problem for a propagandist. As more people start to ask questions pretty soon they are expressing misgivings to friends relatives etc. Some of these start to question and investigate themselves and the cycle accelerates. This cycle was always going to start given access to information, would always be exponential and therefore would always have exposed the many weaknesses and flaws in CAGW theory. Think tanks and very active sceptics may have made it happen a bit faster but it seems the age of people just trusting dubious proclamations from authority figures is over because they can investigate themselves and together.
lol, Michael,
You are a good defender of the faith.
Comparing skepticism to bombing is clever.
I am sure that is why Schneider set the groundwork strategy for defending the AGW consensus by rationalizing lying by the believers. And I am sure that getting that science done is why climategate shows the team spending so much time undermining those with whom they disagree, hiding the decline, and sharing private doubts while shouting confidence in the public square.
We see this constant harping from the ‘skeptics’ about the turning tide of public opiion.
Sadly for them, most reliable polls don’t give them much comfort. In Oz the last poll i saw (mid-2011), only 80% of people thought we should do something about AGW.
I guess not everyone has heard about the ‘final nail in the coffin of AGW’ that the ‘skeptics’ keep discovering…….repeatedly.
hunter,
Do you have a PhD in mis-understanding how science works?
Michael,
AGW is more like a zombie, so nails in coffins won’t work.
If you find comfort in those non-credible polls, then at least they are worth something.
The turning tide is something I hope you ignore as long as you are able.
There’s no telling what the Australians will get up to next. Mad as a hatful of frogs..too much sunshine, barbies and XXXX cause strange psychological effects.
But back in civilisation however the ghastly warmism disease is being slowly vanquished. And FakeGate is a powerful new weapon in that fight…….
Keep clutching onto those hopes…….it’s all you’ve got.
Michael,
Eugenics seemed unstoppable in the early 20th century. Nearly all leading academics and media and progressive governments were pushing it. Major laws to restructure society were on the verge of being written. Laws imposing forced sterilization and restricting marriage were either being considered or had been written. The few voices pointing out the fraud of eugenics and its perversion of science were ridiculed by the best and brightest.
I am an optimist. I think people behave in similar ways when confronted with similar social diseases. AGW is just a current social disease.
MIchael,
Yr. “…final nail in the coffin…that ‘skeptics’ keep discovering…”
I gotta agree with you, Michael, that “final nail” business is a little trite–along with the “wheels coming off” metaphor and the “stake in the heart” imagery.
Personally, I see the situation more along the lines of the last “tit” breaking surface. And who would have dreamed, if they hadn’t seen it for themselves on this very blog, just how many “boobs” the CAGW-scam monstrosity has attached to its now-exposed underbelly?
Lobby groups aren’t successful in isolation. They are merely one way of projecting the force of big business, political and media interests; lobby groups are at the level of Heartland just privatised PR teams. Without a pliant media many would fail as all they do is issue press releases, arrange a few small conferences, and promote fake science or science interpreted with a particular bias.
The better ones will commission research and build a more transparent network of supporters (the proposed project with Watts seemed to be the exception rather than the rule for Heartland). Building a firmer base of research and influential supporters would probably be essential for getting exposure in the more serious UK media but would be more expensive. The GWPF “educational charity” is not yet that successful, though it has influential people and the Daily Mail to call on.
On the other hand, the likes of Greenpeace, WWF, Friends of the Earth and so forth all started as grass roots organisations with very wide sometimes conflicting interests (eg. wind farms versus natural scenery). They remain dependent on maintaining a wide supporter base which means they must be seen to be taking (expensive) direct action and research – eg. cost of building and operating Rainbow Warrior, monitoring ecosystems, etc.
@steve milesworthy
Not sure what you mean by ‘transparent network of supporters’
Have WWF and Greenpeace published their full list of donors? Everybody who has given them a few quid, or even more? If not, then they are no more – and no less – transparent than the other organisations you mention.
I’ll also note that the very measured National Trust and the RSPB in UK both have wide supporter bases, but they do not feel the need to to pull off high profile but futile publicity stunts on the high seas. Your ‘this means that they must be seen to’ does not follow.
And when the National Trust states a new policy – as it recently has on wind farms – governments sits up and pays attention. When Greenpeace do so, they just yawn.
Well I didn’t claim Greenpeace etc. were transparent. I was talking about non-specific lobby groups and think tanks in that paragraph.
However, I would say that funding my lots of small individual donations counts as transparent because influence of any individual donor is minimised (though it would be nice to see numbers of donors of big amounts).
I’m not a donor to any of the groups I mentioned, but (quick look at accounts on web) 90% of FoE’s 2 million funding is from individuals. 95% of Greenpeace’s rather larger funding is from individuals at 77 euros each (so they have 2.5 million donors).
Of course we all have support for one side of the debate or the other and therefore support for one group of campaigners or the other. Personally I would like to see more commitment to truth rather than sides of the debate because it is that which will bring us all the results we want, an improved lot for ourselves and other people.
@steve m
And I’ve just been trying to find out a little about how Greenpeace operates. It may possibly have started as a grass roots organisation, but it sure as hell isn’t now.
The nearest analogy I can come up with is that it is a partially decentralised multinational corporation, with country specific bodies, but a centralised strategy and control function. The grass roots are there purely to pony up the cash and to carry out the campaigns.
How then does the central committee in each country gain its control? In part it is licensed by Greenpeace International to use the logo. But the Greenpeace UK website is remarkably coy about the UK structure. Beyond the statement that
‘The Chair of Board in the UK is Sue Mayer, and the Executive Director is John Sauven.’
there is no discussion of how a grass roots activist can influence policy, no general meetings announced. Not even an organisation chart or staff list. The usual ‘who we are’ link does not exist on the GP UK website.
So the Greenpeace organisation at least appears to be no more transparent and democratic than does the Heartland one. It gains no moral brownie points on this score from me.
“But the Greenpeace UK website is remarkably coy about the UK structure.”
It’s not really about “moral brownie points”. It’s judgement calls about whether organisations are representing widely or narrowly held viewpoints, something that is important to many people and some politicians.
There are about a hundred local Greenpeace groups in the UK as far as I can see and a random selection seem to be pretty active. Greenpeace do research and if their research is compelling enough they rely a lot on mass action (eg. The VW campaign). If they are not compelling enough or are influencing the wrong things or are caught out doing things their supporters dislike, then their campaigns fail due to lack of mass action, they lose support, therefore lose money, therefore lose influence.
Perhaps as a contrast, the Renewable Energy Foundation is a body with a relatively opaque set of funders and is selling a rather complicated and arguably inconsistent message. So as a result it is viewed with suspicion by many who look closely enough even if it is quite successful in getting publicity.
A lobby group though could choose only to do what it is paid to do, though obviously there needs to be some consistency in its work if it wants to use its work to promote itself.
Greenpeace is a multi-billion dollar operation. My bet is a study would find that nearly all multi-billion dollar organizations will behave in very similar ways. The main thing large organizations attract are people who are willing to devote themselves to the long term survival of the organization.
Some large organizations produce things: energy, oil, coal, food, water, content, etc. Others provide services: insurance, investment advice, healthcare, education. Others trade in social power: Political groups, governments, religions. There are many overlaps, and there are wolves dressed as sheep. And sheep that become wolves.
@hunter
Excellent post. +1
And the one thing that all big organisations share is the wish to continue in existence.
Dr Curry and Giga2:
The reason it is a hoax and a lie all comes down to this …
Radiation from a cooler source always contains frequencies which can resonate with a warmer target and thus be scattered without any energy left behind to be converted to thermal energy.
This is easily seen from the first plot here http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/physics/WiensDisplacementLaw.html
As you can envisage from this plot, as the temperatures approach each other the amount of overlap increases and so the rate of heat transfer decreases until it ceases when the temperatures match.
I know that you may get similar results making calculations with two-way radiation, but situations can be hypothesised which would lead to invalid results.
Consider my funnel experiment concentrating radiation from, say, a large but cooler surface of 5 sq.m onto a smaller but slightly warmer surface of 0.5 sq.m. Even when temperatures become equal you would then have 10 times as much radiation in one direction, or a net of 9 times – all without warming because, if it did warm, the Second Law would be broken..
Thus only the passage of radiation from hot to cold is relevant and it fully explains all that happens in regard to heat flow and temperature changes. More importantly, it explains how and why the Second Law is valid for radiation.
You simply cannot refute this example – equal temperatures and yet net radiation in one direction. Why no further warming?
It is little wonder that Prof Claes Johnson was able to prove this computationally
Sorry – I should have added the following to the second paragraph above :
Radiation from a warmer source has additional higher frequencies than those which resonate in the cooler body. So the extra energy in the radiation having these higher frequencies must be converted to thermal energy.
Hi Doug,
Personally I didn’t really want to get into the science debate again. It seems to me that sceptics have won that in the sense that very few people would dare to say ‘the science is settled’ these days and even fewer would believe them. There are certainly many weaknesses in CAGW theory and hopefully these will be resolved one way or the other. It seems to me that the world is waiting and watching. No warming for 15 years or so, no answers to many of the questions sceptics have raised, few CAGW believers willing to enter into open and honest debate, every propaganda trick used and failed even calls for an end to democracy from some CAGW supporters like Al Gore to ‘save the planet’. It is a wait-and-see time it seems with research being done, propaganda campaigns being halted and reality stubbornly doing its own thing. The evidence is not there to support CAGW IMO and I doubt there was ever much substance to it or ever will be, but we shall see hopefully.
Radiative insulators don’t break any laws of physics, Doug. A so-called ‘space blanket’ is made of very thin highly reflective mylar instead of cheaper and easier to manufacture black mylar specifically because the silvering helps retain warmth by reflecting thermal radiation back at your body rather than absorbing and retransmitting half of what it absorbs to the colder world outside. Greenhouse gases work in just that manner to insulate the surface.
It should be noted however that it doesn’t work well over water because if you slow radiative energy loss where there is an infinite supply of water to evaporate the mode of energy loss will just move from radiation to evaporation without missing a beat. In a dry desert almost all heat loss is radiative. Over the ocean it’s 70% evaporation. Increasing greenhouse gases over the ocean will merely serve to raise the 70% to a higher percentage while lowering the radiative loss number by an equal amount. This when we speak of anthropogenic global warming you should translate it to anthropogenic land warming because anthropogenic ocean warming is an impossible myth.
Doug, please keep your discussion of this issue on the skydragon thread
Doug,
GO AWAY.
oh hunter!
Where is your openness to alternative view points? Trying to shut down the debate. For shame!
We need to teach the controversy about ‘climate skepticism’ – the greenhouse effect is real, it isn’t real and violates the TSLOT, it’s not warming, it’s warming but it doesn’t matter……..
Maybe David W can get a grant from Heartland to produce some teaching material so our school students can learn more about this very important controversy.
Michael
Doug and is sort of like Hansen spouting off with crazed non-sense about earth becoming Venus. Both are certifiable kooks. One just makes a lot more money and is still credible in some quarters.
Dilingpole sums it up; “Fakegate”;
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100137840/fakegate/
It was interesting topic to discuss but the mindless trolls (“big oil” money conspiracy theory fantasy, eco-left as victims instead of bullies, strawmen specialist like Joshua) can’t stay on point. Fakegate illuminates the partisan AGW culture and accounts for why Dr. Curry as vanished from commentary. She might touch the warmer PC third rail even by mistake. The game of make-believe agw is mostly science takes another blow regardless.
I had meant to include the best quote IMHO;
OK. Here goes.
We climate realists don’t think of ourselves as anti-science.
No, really. We think we’re pro-science. That’s what we want science teachers to teach kids in schools: hard science – physics, chemistry, biology. Stuff that’s empirical. Theories that are falsifiable. Not the kind of junk science they teach in places like the school of “environmental” “science” at comedy institutions like the “University” of East Anglia. Because that’s not science at all. It’s computer-modelling, projection, which is more akin to necromancy.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100137840/fakegate
Pity that the ‘climate realists’ are stuck in a time warp – clinging to a view of what science is, that is more than half a century out of date.
Michael you write “clinging to a view of what science is, that is more than half a century out of date.”
What complete and utter nonsense. The fundamentals of the scientific method were laid down by Galileo and Newton, and have not changed in over 300 years. What I was taught in Physics 101 at Cavendish Labs Cambridge over 60 years ago is as valid today as it was then. It is “post-normal” science that is nonsense.
Sorry, Michael. The reliance of physics on empirical data, observed data, and ONLY this sort of data is as valid in the 21st century as it as in the 17th century.
Ahh. So tell us how ‘science’ has changed since then.
Which of the attributes from 50 years ago no longer apply?
The obsession with falsifiability is one. Even Popper soon acknowledged it was nowhere near a sufficient condition to define what science was.
Yet, all this time later, we have people squawking like demented parrots about falsification.
> The fundamentals of the scientific method were laid down by Galileo and Newton […]
Citation needed.
Willard writes “Citation needed.”
I suggest you pick up any standard textbook on elementary physics.
Michael writes “The obsession with falsifiability is one.”
Again, nonsense. “Falsifiablity” is necessary, but not suffient for proper science.
Sorry, ‘falsifiability’ predates Popper. Humans are hard wired to detect deceit, for God’s sake even plants deceive them, and that is what this fantastical, guilt driven escapade has to deal with. There’s been deceit from the git-go; first the true believers had to deceive themselves, and this misunderstanding of climate has crescendoed for a quarter of a century.
Tarentella Time.
=================
Nobody ever claimed that falsifiability is a sufficient condition. But it is a necessary one.
Has that changed?
Lati,
From the way some people here endlessly bang on about it (usually in a misguided way) they seem to think so.
@michael
I do hope that the ideas of necessary and sufficient conditions are not beyond you, nor that they have changed in the last 50 years.
@michael
From your last remark you seem to have got the two arse about face in your mind.
Jim,
Thank you for your suggestion, but I doubt a textbook would settle the question you’re begging here, let alone a physics book. But please, go for it: provide a quote and a source.
***
Latimer,
You say:
> I do hope that the ideas of necessary and sufficient conditions are not beyond you, nor that they have changed in the last 50 years.
Here you go:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/modality-epistemology/
Please check the dates.
WebHubTelescope might notice that David is not cited on this page, which is strange, considering David’s feats underlined above:
http://judithcurry.com/2012/02/15/heartland/#comment-169699
@willard
Thank you for your helpful link, confirming that the traditional meanings of necessary and sufficient still apply today.
It must be Michael who has the ‘misunderstanding’. Perhaps he should stop using long words and concepts that are beyond his training and pay grade.
Here’s a question worth an answer:
Since “empirical” science is formulated from experimentation and observation, does it matter if the subject is nature or a computer program? I prefer the former because it’s result is “real”.
Latimer,
I’m not quite sure one could say that:
> The traditional meanings of necessary and sufficient still apply today.
If you mean that the tradition meanings have not been superceded, I believe that you should take a good second look at the Stanford entry. There is plenty of evidence to the contrary. Besides, using these traditional meanings leads to essentialism:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/essential-accidental/
Falsificationism and essentialism might turn out to be tough to reconcile. But that does not mean it’s impossible. David might be able to help you on this interesting venture.
***
If you mean that the conception of the Ancients is still the one we had 50 years ago, I’d have to check back. Since there’s at least one article published per day in Greek studies, it might take a while. It would be surprising that even there progress improved our understanding.
***
Michael,
You might be interested by this quote from David Papineau:
> When Popper wrote “Logik der Forschung,” he was barely thirty. Despite its flawed center, it was full of good ideas, from perhaps the most brilliant of the bright young philosophers associated with the Vienna Circle. But where the others continued to learn, develop and in time exert a lasting influence on the philosophical tradition, Popper knew better. He refused to revise his falsificationism, and so condemned himself to a lifetime in the service of a bad idea.
http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/gardner_popper.html
For the life of me, I’d never be tempted to draw any parallels with any story we’ll soon monitor.
Michael,
It is like you live in bizzare-o world where all of the problems your side has created, especially the use of post-normal science, are the skeptic’s.
@willard
Thanks, but real life is too short to worry about academic philosophy arguments. Livings to earn, paint to watch dry etc.
@Michael
“The obsession with falsifiability is one. Even Popper soon acknowledged it was nowhere near a sufficient condition to define what science was.”
Absolutely BS. Spoken as one who knows nothing about science.
What is science? Science is a methodology for obtaining information. That’s all it is. It isn’t a thing, it’s a plan of action, a method.
If falsifiability is not part of the scientific method, then we have slipped into Theology! That’s the difference between science and theology, simply the requirement of falsifiability as part of the methodological process known as science.
You are a very religions person? Because your comments sure are identical to religions comments in that regard.
Lati,
“From your last remark you seem to have got the two arse about face in your mind.”
What are you blathering about??
@michael
‘The obsession with falsifiability is one. Even Popper soon acknowledged it was nowhere near a sufficient condition to define what science was’
I don’t know of anybody who believes that falsifiability is a sufficient condition for something to be ‘science’.
Please provide several references where this view has been advanced.
I know of plenty who think it is a necessary condition. Me for one.
But necessary and sufficient are very different things. That is where your understanding is lacking
Capiche?
Thank you for your measured comments, Ms. Curry. If we’re comparing the Heartland document theft to ClimategateThe CRU e-mail releases have been wrongly characterized as a “hack.” All the evidence points to the fact that those releases were leaks by an insider (or whistleblower, if you will). But the Heartland documents were in fact stolen by an already understood mechanism that also involved the crime of identity theft. There is also the question of whether or not the most controversial memo in the document set is a forgery (hint: mimicking the processes that got Dan Rather fired is a bad thing for you “journolists”).
In the alarmist media, the Climategate “leak” became a “hack” and the Heartland “theft” becomes a “leak. Unbelievable. The alarmist side of this debate has been a propagandist machine. If they know they’re doing it, that’s scary, and if they don’t even understand they’re doing this, that might be even scarier.
Anthony Watts explained his request for money from Heartland very openly and concisely. Read it on his blog (WattUpWithThat).
As for teaching kids in grades K-8 about climate alarmism is a criminal waste. These kids don’t know anything about science yet, and yet union professionals are scaring them and lying to them about “unassailable” science. I think it’s akin to brainwashing, and I fully support Heartland’s attempts to either counter or end this practice.
Well said, Mickey.
I agree, Mickey and Ken. The science is settled. The AGW story will fold.
Our entire scientific structure may go with it, if leaders of the scientific community refuse to address experimental observations they ignored for decades to lay the foundation for AGW, like these:
http://www.omatumr.com/Data/1972Data1.htm
http://www.omatumr.com/Data/1972Data.htm
http://www.omatumr.com/Data/1975Data.htm
http://www.omatumr.com/Data/1983Data.htm
http://www.omatumr.com/Data/1991Data.htm
http://www.omatumr.com/Data/1993Data.htm
http://www.omatumr.com/Data/1994Data.htm
http://www.omatumr.com/Data/1996Data.htm
http://www.omatumr.com/Data/2000Data.htm
With kind regards,
Oliver
Mickey,
Even if the CRU mails were released by an insider that wouldn’t make it legal. Whatever one thinks of the moral justifications for the release of either the emails or the Heartland docs on the face of it they would both appear to be unlawful acts.
aa,
Both are criminal acts. HI’s leak appaarently used identity theft and theft of documents. CRU involved leaking and improper use of network priveleges.
so what?
Notice that skeptical community has taken the time in both cases to check the veracity of the docs. CRU climategate e-mails are corroborated and damning. HI docs areinnocuous or forged.
Deal with it.
hunter,
So you actually agree with me then. My point was that Mickey seemed to be suggesting that there was some difference between the legality of the two cases.
NO Andrew. Under ‘The Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998’ an insider might be covered, even if the information was released anonymously.
“the disclosure must be one which the whistleblower “reasonably believes” shows a criminal offence, a failure to comply with legal obligations, a miscarriage of justice, danger to the health and safety of employees, damage to the environment, or the hiding of information which would show any of the above actions. These disclosures do not have to be of confidential information, and this section does not abolish the public interest defence; in addition, it can be the disclosure of information about actions which have already occurred, are occurring, or could occur in the future.”
As the folder the emails were in was labeled FOIA, ‘or the hiding of information which would show any of the above actions’ would be a reasonable defense.
Doc,
The act only protects people from suffering detriment in their employment – it’s not a defence against breaking the law. Furthermore, the information has to be released to a “prescribed person”, which it wasn’t, and the vast majority of the emails could not possibly said to fall into the criteria for the kind of information covered by the act.
aa,
There may or may not be a difference between the two cases from a legal perspective.
We know little about either case, in reality. I know nothing of any significance about UK whistleblower laws, and I bet few of us posting here do either.
If someone did commit id fraud and crossed state lines in the US to hit HI, as is alleged, there could be a federal law aspect to this. Would it prosecuted under this administration? Very doubtful. The forging of documents in the name of HI in order to damage them, if proven, could have significant damages, but getting redress of those damages could be very difficult.
A society of free speach and weakly enforced laws is in many ways a good thing for increasing the availability of information, but it is tough on things like privacy and secrecy. Think on the NYT publishing with impunity highly clasified secrets of on going operations of significant importance to the war on terror a few years ago. In that light climategate and fakegate are gnats in a room of elephants.
Now if climategate v3.0 is ever released involves as I hope not only smoking guns but fingerprints and bodies (so to speak) then we might upgrade that gnat to a more impressive status.
Hi Andrew, I certainly didn’t mean to imply any specific legal distinction between the two terms. I was talking about the propaganda value in the incorrect usages.
A “leak” is perceived by the most people as something of a public service, performed to expose or inhibit a nefarious activity being done by people with power over the leaker. In the case of the Climategate releases, I think the term leak fits, even if there are some potential legal risks to the leaker. I won’t comment on what constitutes a nefarious activity in my mind, leaving that as an exercise for the reader.
A “hack” implies some guy sitting in a basement, using his advanced computer knowlege and skill in a sociopathic way, in order to illegally create chaos for his own personal, selfish, twisted reasons.
I think it’s not an accident that these two terms are being used incorrectly in this thread, and elsewhere in the CAGW debate. Speaking only for myself, I try to resist being limited by intentional propaganda from people with an agenda. Here I point it out for others who’s sensitivity to such things may not be as high as mine, in case they might want to avoid being subtly indoctrinated, too. Because the fewer unnecessary filters we have, the easier it is to understand both the Heartland document theft and the Climategate e-mail leaks.
I fully grasp why DeSmogBlog would want to embarrass Heartland Institute. But have you asked yourself why would someone who works at CRU would want to embarrass Dr. Phil Jones and “the team?” Might someone have thought that the entire scheme of work there was being corrupted by groupthink, or had gone off the rails and needed to be exposed before the world made some stupid grand decisions at Copenhagen and Durbin? Maybe? Of course we can’t know without more information, but it would certainly make for an interesting interview someday, wouldn’t it?
Jim,
Your last paragragh is the epitome of what I was saying.
So you reject probabalistic induction?
I think what he is shaking his head at is paying government toadies to indulge in stochastic projection.
Michael writes “So you reject probabalistic induction?”
I dont reject ANYTHING AT ALL. There are all sorts of techniques which help us acquire a better knowledge of what is going on in any aspect of physics. In the end, however, if you want to decide what is right and what is wrong, the ONLY thing you can rely on, is the hard, measured, independently replicated, observed data. There are all sorts of techniques that help you get better data, but in the end the only thing that counts is the empirical data.
The example that comes to mind is Michelson/Morley. And the quote I use all the time from William Wordsorth “To the solid ground of Nature; Trusts the mind that builds for Aye”.
The Supreme Court of Physics is the empirical data. That is the only thing on which we can rely.
What you say only makes sense of you actually are interestid in, “Distinguishing Reality from Fantasy” and “Truth from Propaganda.’
“There are two other reasons why people believe in human-caused global warming despite strong evidence against it. Global warming is like a religion. In ‘Distinguishing Reality from Fantasy, Truth from Propaganda,’ a lecture given to the Commonwealth Club in September 2003, Michael Crichton identifies environmentalism as ‘the religion of choice for urban atheists.’ Gaia, the living planet, is its Mother Goddess. In this religion’s canon, industrial civilization (to paraphrase Merlin Stone, author of When God Was a Woman) is acne on her face. Crichton notes how environmentalism mimics Judeo-Christian beliefs: ‘There’s an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there’s a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability.’ The Kyoto Protocol is it’s articles of faith. What about the fact no change in satellite and balloon-measured temperatures has occurred over the last 25 years despite rising CO2 levels? No problem. Adherents of this religion ignore facts like this and recite their catechism of apocalyptic computer climate models.
“Global warming also has ideological underpinnings. ‘Environmentalism is the last refuge of socialism,’ as one observer puts it. Although socialism may have failed as an economic model, many believe it can halt man-made global warming and, by this means, reform civilization. Constraining CO2.”
Well then you do in fact reject a lot of science, because you persist in this out-dated Baconian model that only direct physical measurements are legit science.
Michael, you write “Well then you do in fact reject a lot of science, because you persist in this out-dated Baconian model that only direct physical measurements are legit science.”
One of the problem with blogs is that people like yourself, dont read what people actually write. I reject nothing; not models, not models making predictions, nothing at all.
And why relying on observed data as the only way of resolving who is right in a disussion of physcis, is somehow wrong, I have no idea.
How else would you suggest we decide which side is correct with respect to CAGW?
Jim, Michael
Computer programs are essential to scientific studies. Without them we would progress much slower….yada yada
However, IMO the results from all computer programs should be subject to ‘certification in real life”. I may be mistaken, but I believe ’empirical’ studies are just that….formulate your theory using the computer and then find that result in the system you are studying (in this case the global weather/climate system). Physics progresses this way, why shouldn’t other sciences?
AGW has been promoted for over 35 years, using $Billions of our money and the theory still has a way to go to get that ‘real world’ certification. They are only part way through the puzzle — but they want to make changes to the world based on their interim result.
I say we should do some more study before relegating the world to a program that will cost $Trillions and we are not sure of the results!
Jeffery you write “I may be mistaken, but I believe ‘empirical’ studies are just that….formulate your theory using the computer and then find that result in the system you are studying (in this case the global weather/climate system). Physics progresses this way, why shouldn’t other sciences?”
I believe you are absolutely correct. But Michael seems to think that a completely new way has been found as to how we study physics. I have seen it referred to as post-normal physics, and it may have other names. Frankly, I think it is nonsense, but Michael insists that I am wrong.
There is no substitute for observed data in resloving competing ideas as to which of two sides in a dispute about physics is right. None whatsoever.
Jim
Thank you!, Michael is expousing a view where science can progress on the cheap. It takes very little to formulate the theory, compared to finding the result in the real world. Look at it this way: start with a computer program that contains, say, the 40 largest variables and write the code to adjust them based on known formulae. Put in the beginning values, push the button … and voila! the answer. Tweak it if necessary and then gain acceptance by publishing it in a science journal. Easier if you are in a closed group of peers and control the journal.
As you know, I am pushing on the temp/CO2 linkage because I don’t think they have it right yet. I am not a scientist, but I do have a brain. If “they” can’t give me an answer on the easy stuff, how do they think I will accept their answers on the hard stuff? Like, what causes the PDO shifts?
They have done studies in the lab on CO2 radiation and absorption and they claim that cannot be observed in our atmosphere, but I think they have a place of study that would suffice — use the Biosphere, located in Arizona.Totally isolated from our atmosphere, but big enough to replicate it.
Why have they not tried it?I would prefer finding the result in the atmosphere. This would be the ‘proof’ I am looking for.
G’day Chief,
Thanks for the cowboy song and the invitation. What’s the name of the other horse?
See you Sunday after church.
Beth.
Beth
What on earth is up with everyone on this blog the last few days? Even more name calling than usual and some of it quite barbed, even on the science threads.
We need some soothing music or failing that one of your well chosen poems :)
tonyb
Maam,
He ain’t really a horse – he just thinks he’s a horse. He’s a unicorn – a mythical creature born of the human imagination. He was thought by the Greeks to live in India and was an idea repeated in their textbooks – the original awkward scientific consensus. So we are calling him CAWG out AWG.
See you Sunday after church.
Robert
There were several comments in the related posts that pointed out the need to focus on more important issues and to resist the temptation to mire Climate Etc. and the Science in banal muse. Yet, from the FakeGate episode, several interesting issues and one important concern emerged.
The take-away, for me, relates to the information that IS finding its way into K-12 classrooms and the concern it may not be factually correct. If Federal and State educational funding is being diverted to deliver a slanted view, we’re in for a much bigger problem down the road which is likely to kill inspiration Scientific problemistic forecasting.
Anthony Watt’s data visualization tool proposal is conceptually beyond reproach. I hope it will be 3D and insightful.
The other funding proposal isn’t logical from my perspective. It would be far more logical to first determine and evaluate the integrity of K-12 educational material related to Climate before launching a Skeptic vs “fill in the blank” view of climate change.
In my opinion, the educational proposal before Heartland should be rejected in favor of analysis. If NASA, one of the principal educational vehicles to K-12, is doing a fantastic job related to the subject matter, its far more beneficial to support their effort. If not, isn’t it far more beneficial to the student to help NASA to correct the errors?
John
If someone was reading climate etc for the first time over the last few days I am sure they would have formed a very negative view of the blog and many of its denizens.
Quick Judith, divert everyone with a week in review
Tonyb
Nice post – although one quibble in that I don’t share the same degree of concern about killing problemistic forecasting.
When the majority of humankind believes that the earth is warming due to our own activities while ignoring all other possible causation. And when the minority are not even permitted to question the collective by expressing doubts via vastly under funded organizations. Well, then we should all take comfort in the fact that Mother Nature will smack the majority down – eventually. And if it weren’t for the fact that the majority wants us all to pay for their unproven remedies (actually mostly dis-proven), we should all sit back and watch the madness. But alas, it would be too expensive. Thus, the politicization of climate science MUST be the natural place where the discussion resides. And all of this pontificating from Joshua in this thread is a straw man argument. We skeptics acknowledge that the climate science should not have been politicized IN THE FIRST PLACE but now that it has, there is no going back. And the Heartland Institute is a natural reaction to the current order of things. The disingenuous chicanery of various AGW climate scientists and advocacy organizations took what was shaky unproven science and, over a period of a decade or three, made it into an orthodoxy long before any skeptic took much notice at all. By definition, skeptics arise only after others have already created the orthodox.
FYI: Published yesterday (2/16/12) by Joe Bast, President/CEO of Heartland Institute. Given that Bast was out-of-town yesterday, this is a quick, point-by-point rebuttal of some of the claims and disinformation / omissions / innuendos in the Times article (in Bast’s view). I expect more when Heritage has reviewed DeSmogBlog and the Times piece.
Bast, Joe. “Heartland Institute Rebuts Outlandish New York Times Story on Stolen and Fake Documents.” Opinion. Somewhat Reasonable, February 16, 2012. http://blog.heartland.org/2012/02/heartland-institute-rebuts-outlandish-new-york-times-story-on-stolen-and-fake-documents/
The kerfuffle seems provoked by this issue, which see:
Wolfgang, Ben. “Scientists Want Climate Change in Young Minds.” The Washington Times, January 16, 2012. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/jan/16/scientists-want-climate-change-young-minds/
Curry, Judith A. “Climate Classroom.” Scientific. Climate Etc., January 20, 2012. http://judithcurry.com/2012/01/20/climate-classroom/
Reardon, Sara. “Education Advocates Enter the Climate Tempest.” Opinion. ScienceInsider, January 17, 2012. http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2012/01/education-advocates-enter-the.html?ref=hp
There seems (to me) to be a pattern of suppressing opposing viewpoints. For one instance, see:
Id, Jeff. “Crackdown – Shooting in the Dark.” Scientific. The Air Vent, December 14, 2011. http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2011/12/14/crackdown-shooting-in-the-dark/
McIntyre, Steve. “Police Raid on Tall Bloke.” Scientific. Climate Audit, December 14, 2011. http://climateaudit.org/2011/12/14/police-raid-on-tall-bloke/
Tallbloke. “Tallbloke Towers Raided: Many Computers Taken.” Scientific. Tallbloke’s Talkshop, December 14, 2011. http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2011/12/14/tallbloke-towers-raided-many-computers-taken/
Missed one:
Watts, Anthony. “Notes on the Faked Heartland Document.” Scientific. Watts Up With That?, February 15, 2012. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/15/notes-on-the-fake-heartland-document/
I prefer suckergate to fakegate. The real story here is not the dishonesty of the more vociferous CAGW advocates. We all knew about that. The real story is the utter gullibility of run of the mill CAGW advocates.
As for the series of comments above decrying the tone of this post’s comments, did anyone else notice that these pleas for civility only began after it became clear the cries of dishonesty and fraud against Heartland, and David Wojick, in particular were shown to be total fabrications?
It reminds me of the time that Dr. Curry first had the courage to say that the Hockey Stick graph hiding the decline was dishonest. The story among the CAGWers immediately became the incivility of Dr. Curry, so they could avoid entirely the issue of the dishonest presentation by Mann et al.
Perhaps the central issue in the climate debate for skeptics is whether you can trust the scientists, their political patrons, and the media types who propagate their propaganda. Suckergate doesn’t say anything really about the scientists (unless a scientist actually forged the fake document), but it says a lot about the “media” and most vocal supporters of the CAGW movement. (Maybe Mosher could tell me if I used parentheses correctly in the previous sentence? But I digress.)
I wouldn’t describe fakegate/suckergate as a nail in the coffin of the CAGW movement. But I would describe it as another chapter in the decline and fall of the Romman empire.
It’s called “Tradition”;
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/15/politics/campaign/15guard.html
Environmental groups, including foundations like Pew Trusts, fund many academics. COI? Maybe, maybe not. Depends on integrity of the scientist.
Idso, Singer, and Carter are being paid to write a report (NIPCC) that they wanted to write anyway. Their opinions are not being bought. It is valid that they have a POV–Hansen does. ClimateGate showed people getting editors fired, perverting peer review, hiding declines, and other bad behavior. Heartland docs show a policy think tank doing policy think tanky type stuff. Don’t like policy think tanks? Don’t interact with them. They are NOT NSF.
In that regard, NSF RFPs in areas like ecology and climate these days ask you to say how your work will save species or prevent climate change. You have to promise that you will show how bad humans are for the environment. Real pressure. If you haven’t tried to apply to them, don’t deny it. I was part of a team working on a modeling proposal to USDA last year, about effects of climate change on the SE USA. The project requirements included essentially the production of propaganda about how people should change their lifestyles to prevent climate change. Foundations offer money for actual advocacy (“capacity building” “community action”), even as part of research.
The requirement that sceptics be purer than driven snow and live on acorns and grass is so absurd, as is the the belief that accepting money from NSF or Greenpeace is without strings.
Craig said: “In that regard, NSF RFPs in areas like ecology and climate these days ask you to say how your work will save species or prevent climate change.”
This is remarkable. I’ve never seen anything like that in an NSF application to my usual fields (Econ, DRMS). There are the usual questions about impact on the “infrastructure of science,” science education (meaning involvement of undergrads, grads and postdocs), and society at large, but even the last is extremely vague and afaik never mentioned or called out by reviewers as weak no matter what you write.
Is there a way for us to see such questions without logging into Fastlane and posing as a potential climate researcher?
“Is there a way for us to see such questions without logging into Fastlane and posing as a potential climate researcher?”
Yes. Go to http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_list.jsp?org=NSF&ord=date and click on the appropriate number under “Program guidelines”. I examined a few relevant climate-related RFPs and found no such statements as that reported by Craig Loehle. Perhaps they are there someplace; Craig should provide a link.
I gave an example above of one from USDA where 1/3 of work was for an “educational” component (outreach) to change people’s behavior with respect to how they should manage forests wrt climate change. This material was to be started before the research was completed. EPA research is heavily oriented this way. DOE research also.
Here is an NSF project on climate change education: try proposing to write educational material saying it is not going to be that bad or even have positive effects:
http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=503465&org=ERE&from=home
Here is another
http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=503399&org=NSF&sel_org=NSF&from=fund
“The consequences of climate variability and change are becoming more immediate and profound than previously anticipated.”……” enables interagency cooperation on one of the most pressing problems of the millennium: climate change, how it is likely to affect our world, and how we can plan for its consequences.”
Again, go ahead and submit a proposal that suggests anticipated climate change could help forestry & agriculture.
“Again, go ahead and submit a proposal that suggests anticipated climate change could help forestry & agriculture.”
Ah no thanks. I can hardly bear writing the damn things when I actually want one. :) I’ll take your word for it.
Judith, I am very surprised you did not comment on the fraudulent way these documents were obtained.
Theft is theft, but when it is for journalistic reasons it can sometimes be excused if, AND ONLY IF, there is a legitimate public interest reason for its disclosure.
You said: ” In terms of moral equivalence, what Heartland is doing is not surprising; seems to be no different than what other advocacy groups do.” In other words, they are doing what we would expect. What is the public interest in knowing that an organisation is doing what is expected of that organisation?
What e.g. would you say if I obtained a copy of your bank account & photos of your underwear draw, and published them on my blog because I just felt like it and you were outrageous enough to wear frilly underwear and the odd corset … perhaps even something racier! And your bank account showed that you bought the odd luxury, or had a particular hobby? Come on, you would be absolutely furious … not because it wasn’t something anyone could guess … but because it is private and it should remain private.
Everyone has a right to privacy. That right over-rides the interest of the public to know what is in your knicker drawer … even if it is something a bit racier than we might expect from a lady of your years.
The proper comparison I think is more like, you published evidence that the denier wears frilly underwear whereas the AGW True Believers were caught red-handed wearing white sheets to the rally.
Exactly!!
Craig writes: “The requirement that sceptics be purer than driven snow and live on acorns and grass is so absurd, as is the the belief that accepting money from NSF or Greenpeace is without strings.”
I agree. It’s incredibly frustrating that many (most?) alarmists cannot see their own hypocrisy…cannot see that their whole fraudulent movement is bought and paid for. The notion that climate skepticism wouldn’t exist were it not for financial incentives, that in fact most prominent skeptics are on some secret payroll, is beyond laughable. A clearer example of Freudian projection I cannot imagine.
Bottom line, the alarmists are increasingly desperate. Everything’s breaking for the skeptics these days, and they (the alarmists) jumped at the chance to score a few points for a change (it’s been a long while. The last little pathetic piece of “good news’ for them I think was when the confused Professor Muller declared there was no longer any reason to be a skeptic.)… with an almost frenzied hunger for revenge. It all makes them look just that much more ridiculous.
That’s very well put Pokerguy. The thing of distain is watch how it will be handled (buried) in the coming months and years.
Why doesn’t Revkin follow Dan Rather for example into his goodnight?? Scaling saves in moral failure situations? (Fakegate is relatively small being my point)
What a pathetic attempt to create a reverse-climategate. Creating a false document to add intriguing allegations to the vanilla true documents. Speaks volumes about the Greens.
WHAT WILL BE THE EVIDENCE FOR NATURAL GLOBAL WARMING/COOLING?
The overall global warming rate was about 0.06 deg C per decade.
http://bit.ly/k9cWaz
For the period 1970 to 2000, the global warming rate was 0.16 deg C per decade.
http://bit.ly/jFmOny
The global mean temperature data has an approximately cyclic component.
http://bit.ly/iApyoc
Therefore, during the global warming phase,
Global warming rate = Overall warming rate + Cyclic warming rate
0.16 = 0.06 + Cyclic warming rate
Therefore, the cyclic warming rate = 0.16-0.06=0.10 deg C per decade.
Assuming the cyclic cooling rate is the same as the cyclic warming rate, we have:
Approximate global cooling rate = Overall warming rate – Cyclic cooling rate
Approximate global cooling rate = 0.06-0.10=-0.04 deg C per decade.
Here is evidence for this cooling rate for the period from 1940 to 1970
http://bit.ly/epk88B
If this cooling rate of about 0.04 deg C per decade is observed for the period 2000 to 2030, it will be evidence for the cause in change in global mean temperature to be natural, contradicting anthropogenic global warming.
It should be quite a wake up call for some Western Scientists to realize that only a cold slap in the face by Mother Nature is sufficient to make the witchdoctors of modern science — likened by some to the science of ancient astrology and the casting of chicken bones to foretell the future — put their prognostications of doomsday aside and to stop giving aid and comfort to the enemies of enlightenment.
Getting Mickey the Kid (a “Western” tale)
Cast:
Lawman: Straight-shooter Steve
Gunslinging young outlaw: Mickey the Kid
Corrupt big landowner + cattleman: Big Jim
Big Jim’s moll: Gangly Gabi
Lady sharpshooter: Dead-eye Judy
Supporting cast: Big Jim band members, Josh Bigosh, Kenny T, “Fastdraw” Phil, “Dry-gulch” Keith
It is evening, but the sun has not yet set over the arid plains.
Lawman Steve, wearing a large white sombrero, is slowly riding into a dusty Western clapboard town on a tall white horse. Down the mud road lies the town saloon, with the sound of piano music coming out.
In the saloon, Big Jim and his boys are drinking whiskey, smoking and playing poker. Gabi is sitting on the arm of Big Jim’s large leather chair, watching the action.
The door swing open and in runs Kenny T, shouting: There’s a lawman ridin’ inta town, boss – an’ they say he’s comin’ after Mickey ta take ‘im in!
Mickey the Kid starts twirling his twin Colt 44s nervously, and says to Jim: Lemme ambush ‘im, boss –it’ll be easy.
Big Jim brushes Mickey off and says: I’ll handle this..
The doors swing open again and in walks Straight-shooter Steve, the lawman.
Big Jim asks the lawman: Are you “Straight-shooter” Steve, the federal lawman they say has busted more’n a dozen outlaws from El Paso ta Deadwood?
Steve answers: Yep. That’s me. An’ I’m here ta git Mickey an’ take ‘m back ta Dodge City fer trial.
BJ: Mickey’s one of my boys now, an’ I don’ reckon I wanna lose ‘im – so he ain’t goin’ nowhere.
SS: I reckon I’ll have ta take ‘im in by force then, Big Jim.
The crowd is tense – until Big Jim breaks the silence: Let’s settle this outside.
The crowd all moves outside to the board sidewalk, while Steve and Mickey move to the dirt road for a face-off and shoot-out.
Unbeknownst to Steve, two of Big Jim’s men, “Fast-draw” Phil and “Dry-gulch” Keith are hiding on two opposite balconies with Remington rifles pointed directly at him.
A hush falls over the crowd, with only the distant sound of a dog barking, as Steve and Mickey stare at each other with squinted eyes.
After several minutes (which seem like hours) Mickey finally goes for his Colt.
Almost simultaneously, three shots ring out.
Mickey falls to the ground and the two riflemen tumble down from the balconies.
Everyone is astounded at the result.
An oldtimer walks up to Steve (as he is holstering his Colt) and asks: How in the world did you do that, lawman?
As “Dead-eye” Judy steps out of the shadows clutching her still-smoking Winchester rifle to her side, Steve says: In a tough spot ya sometimes gotta have help.
The curtain falls.
Tonyb ,
Thanks for the kind message. Yes, I have noticed a few harpoons flying on the blog these last couple of postings.Do you think the Climate Wars post maybe souped things up? Judith has the patience of a saint :-)
Chief, I had horses in my back yard when I was young.Their stables were drawn with colored chalk on the paling fence and together we would go everywhere. They weren’t unicorns though :-(
Beth.
Hi Beth – I have had a blue horse for a year. He was given to me because I asked for a blue horse – isn’t that nice. The universe always gives a cowboy what he needs. We go everywhere together. He is so astonishingly beautiful that ambling along the trail is a joyous thing. Mostly we amble – but when chased by cougars we can reach relativistic velocities and travel in time and space.
Nostalgia – Jamie King-Holden
There is a place, far from the television’s warped smile
And my Mother’s cook top toiling,
Where golf balls are swallowed
by the Murray’s thick amnesia.
There is a place, unseen from the pot-smoked man-shed,
And my Father’s calamity of tools,
Where willows huddle and whisper like children
At the floating calf, facedown.
There is a place, invisible, to the tar-scarred suburbs
And cars’ headlight violence,
Where the bank is pillow-soft and transforms nightly,
When the moon turns its back on the water.
There was a place, below a lonely, hunched gum,
Skin, sun-aged bark, and flaking,
Where we dipped our feet in the quick-cool stream;
Where you and I built sandcastles.
Robert I Ellison
Chief Hydrologist
An academic wrote a letter to The Age, Melbourne, complaining that paleo-geologist Bob Carter gets some modest funding from the Heartland Institute. The Age’s cartoonist responded with a cartoon featuring PM Julia Gillard and paleologist and Climate Commissioner Tim Flannery: http://www.theage.com.au/national/letters
Carter notes that “The cartoonist at The Melbourne Age is that very rare animal, an internal DAGW-sceptical mole working for a mainstream media publication. His name is John Spooner, and his email address, should anyone want to drop him a line of support (assuming he still has a job on Monday!), is jspooner@theage.com.au.
Chief@18 Feb 1.03
‘He is so astonishingly beautiful that ambling along the trail is a joyous thing.’ :-)
I love this line from James Delingpole:
So, next time you try to fake your Protocols of the Elders of Climategate document, guys, at least try to credit the people you’re trying to smear with a bit of integrity. Not everyone is like you, you realise?
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100137840/fakegate/
I tucked this to a Bishop Hill thread a couple of days back but since it uses a list from this JC post perhaps it chould be copied here as well … just for the record.
***
I’ve decided to put in the hard yakka and document how the climate doomsday blogosphere have responded since the Heartland Institute’s statement that at least one of the documents is a forgery.
The following are the various ‘updates’ and ‘disclosures’ that try to put the best spin to the notion that the narrative in the key ‘Confidential Memo: 2012 Heartland Climate Strategy’ document is correct even though the document itself is fake.
I’ve used the list in Judith Curry’s “Heartland” post which helpfully provides a collection of views on this ‘ShrillGate’ investigation. [The comments within square brackets are (mostly) mine]
1-Brendan DeMelle, Heartland Institute Exposed: Internal Documents Unmask Heart of Climate Denial Machine, DeSmogBlog (links to all of the leaked documents):
[No update yet. This post still reports and holds on to the forged document as ‘article of faith’. The key document is extensively quoted in the post without any regard to the Heartland Institute’s statment that it is fake.]
2-Chris Mooney, “Dissuading Teachers From Teaching Science”: The Leak of Alleged Heartland Institute Documents, The Intersection:
“Update: The Heartland Institute has put out a statement, claiming that “Some of these documents were stolen from Heartland, at least one is a fake, and some may have been altered.” This post has been updated accordingly.”
3-Joe Romm, Heartland Documents Reveal Fringe Denial Group Plans to Pursue Koch Money, Dupe Children and Cultivate Revkin, Climate Progress
“UPDATE: I have updated this post. Heartland has not denied the authenticity of any of the excerpts now quoted here. They assert these documents were acquired through trickery and are asking people not to write about any of this — but that plea sounds like more satire given what they wrote about the stolen Climategate emails:” [Title of the post has been changed to remove “Cultivate Revkin”]
4-James Hrynyshyn, The Heart(land) of the Denial Campaign, Class M
“UPDATE: Heartland claims that “at least” one of the leaked documents is false. But considering that there is nothing in any of the documents that is inconsistent with what we already knew about the Institute, it seems reasonable to remain skeptical about the denial. After all, denying is what the Heartland folks do best.”
5-Leo Hickman, Leaked Heartland Institute documents pull back curtain on climate scepticism, The Guardian
“Updated: Leaked internal documents from US thinktank expose funding and policy strategies against climate science. UPDATE: 8.47pm The Heartland Institute has now issued a statement claiming one of the documents – “2012 Climate Strategy” – is “fake”.”
6-Suzanne Goldenberg, Leak exposes how Heartland Institute works to undermine climate science, The Guardian
[No specific ‘update’ attached to the article but article history shows several changes. The forged document is quoted.]
7-Heartland Institute budget and strategy revealed, DeepClimate
“[Update Feb. 15. Several news outles (e.g. the Guardian) are reporting that Heartland has branded one of the Heartland documents, the 2012 Climate Strategy, to be a forgery. (See also the Heartland press release). Since its authenticity is in question, I have decided to remove quotes from it as well as the link to that particular document. The Heartland projects discussed remain the same. I have removed one paragraph quoting the “expanded communication strategy”.]”
8-Greg Laden, HeartlandGate: Anti-Science Institute’s Insider Reveals Secrets, Culture as Science — Science as Culture
“Disclaimer: The Heartland Institute is now claiming that these documents have likely been altered or faked, and are threatening to pursue criminal and civil charges against all bloggers who posted comments on them or links to them.
I can not prove that these documents are real or fake. I will certainly pass on to you any information that comes along about this. Have a look at the documents and make up your own mind (before I am forced by guys in suits to take down the links).” [The final sentence before this disclaimer reads “I’m have a hard time stifling the “bwahahaha.”]
9-Greg Laden, The Meaning of Heartland Gate, Culture as Science — Science as Culture
“Disclaimer: The Heartland Institute is now claiming that these documents have likely been altered or faked, and are threatening to pursue criminal and civil charges against all bloggers who posted comments on them or links to them.
I can not prove that these documents are real or fake. I will certainly pass on to you any information that comes along about this. Have a look at the documents and make up your own mind (before I am forced by guys in suits to take down the links).”
[He has managed to stifle the “bwahahaha” this time]
10-Brad Johnson, INTERNAL DOCUMENTS: The Secret, Corporate-Funded Plan To Teach Children That Climate Change Is A Hoax, Think Progress: Green
[No update]
11-Peter Sinclair, How is Joe Bast Like Joe Camel? Looks Like We’re Going to Find Out….., Climate Denial Crock of the The Week
[No specific update, though the post shows awareness of the Heartland Institute’s statement]
12-Michael Tobis, Is Turnabout Fair Play?, Planet 3.0 — Beyond Sustainability
“RESPONSE: Heartland is challenging the veracity of the document containing all three of the most damning statements. I have no information about the provenance of these documents. Again, people who ought to know are saying that they are plausible, but that is hardly a proof of authenticity.
Heartland’s aggressive approach is interesting given their past position on the CRU hacking.
My main interest here is in trying to establish some good for the goose and good for the gander rules. Some people on both “sides” are reluctant to see any equivalence. Heartland, not surprisingly, is among them.”
[The final response after many updates]
13-Shawn Lawrence Otto, Climate Denial Bombshell, NeoRenaissance
“Once again, this approach is not based on science, but on doing the dirty work of vested interests to make rhetorical arguments to protect those interests regardless of what the science may say.
Thus while Heartland has expressly denied the authenticity of the Strategy document, it does nevertheless seem to be essentially in line with the strategy as actually put forth in their undisputed budget and fundraising documents.”
[In other words, “Although the Protocols of Elders of Zion is complete forgery, we know very well what those Jews are up to”]
14-Jonathan Eisen, Leaked insider docs from Heartland Institute goal: “dissuading teachers from teaching science” (ps hey Scholarly Kitchen do you support this?), The Tree of Life
[Many updates but none that clearly states the key document might be fake]
15-Zachary Shanan, Fossil-Fuel-Funded Think Tank, Heartland Institute, Exposed (Deniergate? Heartlandgate? Pick a Name), Clean Technica
“Note: The Heartland Institute has confirmed in a public statement that it sent board materials to an unintended person, but states that the “Climate Strategy” is a fake. DeSmog blog notes, however, that some of the components of the Climate Strategy have now been independently confirmed. “The DeSmogBlog has received no direct communications from the Heartland Institute identifying any misstatement of fact in the ‘Climate Strategy’ document and is therefore leaving the material available to those who may judge their content and veracity based on these and other sources,” Richard Littlemore also writes. The Heartland Institute reports that its president “still has not had the opportunity to read them all to see if they were altered. Therefore, the authenticity of those documents has not been confirmed.” As such, I’ve removed the initial post quoting the documents and other coverage around the net and will just keep this page updated with new pieces on the story as they are published on sites looking into it further, or by the Heartland Institute itself.”
16-Phil Plait, Breaking news: A look behind the curtain of the Heartland Institute’s climate change spin, Bad Astronomy
“[UPDATE: Heartland has confirmed that some of the documents are real, but claims the strategy document, which I quote below about teaching strategy, is faked. This claim has not yet been confirmed or refuted. DeSmogBlog has more info.]”
[Phil Plait denies that he is a member of the crazy climate doomsday cult. As of this moment, his claims that he is a skeptic has not yet been confirmed nor refuted]
17-Christian Hunt, Undermining the IPCC, keeping opposing voices out, dissuading the teaching of science – Heartland in its own words?, The Carbon Brief
“UPDATE: The Heartland Institute have stated in a press release that one of the leaked documents is a fake. Specifically, they claim that the memo that contains the first three quotes highlighted below was fabricated:
One document, titled “Confidential Memo: 2012 Heartland Climate Strategy,” is a total fake apparently intended to defame and discredit The Heartland Institute. It was not written by anyone associated with The Heartland Institute. It does not express Heartland’s goals, plans, or tactics. It contains several obvious and gross misstatements of fact.
We’re happy to take the Heartland Institute’s word on this. We have clarified below which quotes were from the document Heartland have identified as a fake. We’re also happy to apologise to the Heartland Institute for attributing quotes to them which were taken from a faked document.”
18-William Connelly, Heartland, Stoat
“[Update: in all fairness, I should point out that Heartland are currently claiming that some of the documents are fake. The truth or otherwise of this is yet to be determined.]”
19-Keith Kloor, Climate Skeptic Organization Feels the Heat, Collide-a-Scape
“UPDATE: The Heartland Institute, in response, claims:
Yesterday afternoon, two advocacy groups posted online several documents they claimed were The Heartland Institute’s 2012 budget, fundraising, and strategy plans. Some of these documents were stolen from Heartland, at least one is a fake, and some may have been altered.
Well this story just got a whole lot more interesting.”
20-Steve Zwick, Blog reveals Climate Change Denier Group’s CorporateBackers, Forbes
“NOTE: This piece was initially posted at 11:48 GMT; it was updated at 12:14 GMT to incorporate Heartland’s response.”
21-Will Nichols, Will Heartland Institute scandal force transparency on corporate donors?, BusinessGreen
[No apparent update]
22-J.A., Trouble in the Heartland?, The Economist
“Access Denied / User Login” [It seems the economist has completely pulled off the post form its blogs. However a google search shows the article begins with “ASSUMING they are authentic, the trove of confidential documents from the Heartland Institute,…”]
23-Richard Littlemore, Mashey Report Confirms Heartland’s Manipulation; Exposes Singer’s Deception, DeSmogBlog
[No update. The post sticks to the narrative in the forged document in other words and with more not-so-fresh evidence!]
24-Canucks On Heartland Institute Payroll, Big City Lib Strikes Back
“Update: It should be noted that the Heartland Institute disputes the authenticity of the “strategic document” from which these quotes have been taken. While the general the content of the document–Wojick’s writing up a set of course modules and etc.–has generally been confirmed, some of the more inflammatory wordings (“dissuading teachers” etc.) may be in question.”
25-Katherine Stewart, The new anti-science assault on US schools, The Guardian
[Not relevant. Posted before the Shrillgate]
26-Jess Zimmerman, How the Heartland Institute plans to wreck education, Grist
“Update: Heartland has released a statement, saying that “some of these documents were stolen from Heartland, at least one is a fake, and some may have been altered.” New York Times writer Andrew Revkin, one of the journalists mentioned in the Heartland documents, told Politico that “he’s been able to confirm that the documents are legitimate.” However it turns out, at least we got to see the Climategate-boosting Heartland Institute complain that “honest disagreement should never be used to justify … criminal acts and fraud.” [Still dazed and confused even after some reflection]
And so the list ends.
One of these days I’m gonna get paid for this work.
****
PS. Since I’ve never figured out how to copy&paste a text with all the HTML tags, italics and bolds, I’ve decided to number the list this time for greater clarity.
sHx,
Strong work! Thank you for updating and condensing the changes in status. Again, thanks for the good work.
sHx,
Don’t you just want to burn your clothes after going through that exercise?
Sooooo, did PG cop to the dirty deed yet? Inquiring minds want to know. Once the “mystery” senders IP address is uncovered it will be checkmate for sure. Time is short.
There has been a major development on the Heartland story. The LA Times has publihed a editorial.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-ed-climate-20120220,0,3564279.story
In this we find the following
“According to the New York Times, the curriculum would claim, among other things, that “whether humans are changing the climate is a major scientific controversy.”
That is a lie so big that, to quote from “Mein Kampf,” it would be hard for most people to believe that anyone “could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.” ”
Earlier, our hostess posted the following..
“curryja | February 19, 2012 at 1:10 pm |
For the record, I see no evidence of C. A main part of my effort has been trying to figure out the % of A over the 20th century (the IPCC attribution statement of most >50% is way overconfident, and A may very well be 50% or less)”
I interpret Judith’s remarks that she agrees with the statement “whether humans are changing the climate is a major scientific controversy.”. In which case, would it be too much to hope that she will use her considerable status on this issue of CAGW to publicly declare that the LA Times is wrong to claim that the statement is a “lie so big “.
It seems to me that this is an issue so important, that I am not out of line in hoping our hostess will, in fact, make some sort of a public statement on this issue.
It’s interesting that LA Times sides so strongly with the warmist and compares the Heartland institute papers to a quote from “Mein Kampf”.
Credit to you for bringing up an editorial that appears to be totally opposed to your own views.
Mein Kampf? At this point, isn’t someone supposed to yell “Godwin fail!” or something like that?
I don’t view the “whether” humans are changing the climate to be a major scientific controversy; the scientific controversy is “how much” (relative to natural variability) and what are the relative contributions of greenhouse gases, aerosols, and land use change
Judith
Wouldn’t it be accurate to state that you are unsure of the rate of warming that is due to human influence and you are unsure as to the impact of any warming on humanity (positive or negative) over the long term?
Well, that may not be the best way to state my take on all this, but it isn’t incorrect
Dr. Curry, you wfrite “I don’t view the “whether” humans are changing the climate to be a major scientific controversy; the scientific controversy is “how much” (relative to natural variability) and what are the relative contributions of greenhouse gases, aerosols, and land use change”
Fair enough. Are you prepared to state that publicly in connection with the LA Times editorial? This controversy relates as to whether the dogma of CAGW should be taught in schools K to 12.
I have another post coming up in a few days on teaching the controversy
“curryja | February 20, 2012 at 2:47 pm |
I have another post coming up in a few days on teaching the controversy“
I understand why you have not answered my question. Thank you, anyway.
“whether humans are changing the climate is a major scientific controversy.” That is a lie so big … (A)
Is it too much to suppose that the specific issue in question is actually whether humans are warming up the climate ? (B)
If so, the only lie so big here, is the one (A) that claims the one that tries to portray the truth (B) is a big lie.
,
Punksta- I suggest that there is a strong consensus that humans are changing the climate.
There is Imo, no consensus on the rate of the change that is due specifically to human released CO2.
There is also no consensus regarding what additional human released CO2 will have on the conditions that impact life around the world. If we had better models that could predict conditions we would be closer–but we don’t.
Imo- the IPCC and cAGW proponents inappropriately claim to “know” more than they really do, but that is not to say they don’t know anything.
Punksta, the change issue is broader than warming because of the droughts, floods, etc. But one could start with warming and move toward change, via the causal chain. Any point that occurs in an issue tree can be made the top point, so it is mostly a matter of art which one one uses as the top point. I prefer to make the most general point the top point.
Rob, I cannot agree that it is established fact that humans are changing the global climate. If we can’t say how or how much then such a claim is vacuous. Bear in mind that we don’t actually know the climate is changing, or how and when if it is, or even just what that means. If an oscillator oscillates it is not changing. The conceptual confusions in the climate debate are deep.
David
If I read that you were teaching, or proposed to teach; that additional CO2 will not have any impact on the world’s temperature, I would strongly disagree with your position and would think it should not be allowed to be taught in public schools.
In theory, it has to have an impact, but the issue is how much and when in the actual system. To teach that there is still considerable debate regarding how much seems completely appropriate to teach.
Where I get very frustrated is when people claim to know something with certainty, when there is insufficient information to make such a claim. As an example, when people claim that the world will be worse for humans as a result of it being warmer, or that the oceans will become less supportive of life as a result of more CO2. I hope what you put together is factually correct- otherwise you will correctly subject to criticism.
Rob, I am not teaching that it has no impact, but rather that we do not know if it has an impact, and the matter is therefore controversial. There is a fundamental difference between knowing and not knowing. I want to teach what we do not know, based on the debate.
But in no case does it have to have an impact, just because it is a GHG. That is probably the greatest fallacy in the debate. It could, for example, be cancelled out by negative feedbacks, or extraneous forces. The law of gravity is true but a feather does not have to fall if the wind is blowing.
David
Using your simple example: Gravity will eventually force the feather to hit the planet. The issue is how long it will take under different conditions.
Those LA buggers! They cite Mann but do not mention my name, and I am the one they are talking about. Perhaps I am too evil to be named? I even exchanged emails with them. Perhaps that convinced them to demonize Heartland instead of me? Should I be thankful the climate police are looking the other way?
In any case I firmly claim that “whether humans are changing the climate?” is the best 6 word summary of the climate debate that there is. If anyone has a better 6 word summary I will be happy to see it. The whole idea of issue analysis is to find the central proposition, the top of the issue tree, and then build out from there. Millions of words have been written on this issue, but which six or so express the central question?
David Wojick –
I can’t agree with you – even in the depths of my scepticism. It is surely trivially true – but true nonetheless – that humans are changing the climate. You can argue the triviality, but the truth?
Perhaps you’d like to add whether it is ‘significantly’ or ‘measurably’ or (my favourite) ‘noticeably’ or perhaps (most pragmatically) ‘meaningfully’?
Another option is to take Judith’s path – and a few others – and let go of the ‘whether’ question – leave that to the denialists – and simply ask ‘how much?’ and ‘in what way?’. No assumptions need to be made except that the answer to the first question surely is some.
David,
This is not a central issue of science, this is an issue about decision making. There is certain amount of evidence on human influence on climate (with uncertainty about the strength, not the existence), there are arguments telling that it may lead to severe consequences, but far from anything that could be called certain and accurate. Based on that evidence different people have differing views on what should be done. Their views reflect to very large extent their more general views on the role of government.
That’s the real issue. The fight about climate science is just a projection of the real disagreement. The real problem is so difficult to discuss that people discuss the science instead and don’t care whether their claims make really sense as statements about climate science or not, because their real motivation is elsewhere.
Scientists are often right, when they say that skeptics present erroneous arguments, but from that doesn’t follow necessarily that skeptics are as wrong on the real issue: the policy decisions.
Pekka, well said
“some”
What a deliciously meaningless amount.
Andrew
David, how about “What human activities impact climate most?”
1. Agriculture.
2.Development
3. Airborne pollutants
David –
I think perhaps the word ‘changing’ is being given too much work to do. Would you disagree that humans have an ‘influence’ on the climate? In the way that trees, grasses, algae, plankton, volcanoes and ice sheets have some influence?
It seems to me you might be reluctant to give away something which is undeniable solely because it signifies the opening of the floodgates. I don’t agree that just because we can’t say how much [we can make some meaningful statements about ‘how’] then the claim is vacuous. That seems to me to be totally illogical – there is every prospect that over time we will be able to say with more confidence how much we influence the climate, even if the answer remains vague.
Bad Andrew –
You’re right about ‘some’. Except for David Wojick it undermines his six word summation with the emphasis on ‘whether’. With ‘some’ – which surely is undeniable – the six words become empty. The question is answered. That is true even if you can’t measure the ‘some’.
David,
I support your efforts at developing curriculum, and I am appalled at the credibility given to those who would deny you and HI the liberty to develop curriculum or anything else you or HI wishes to work on and communicate to the public.
I am what you might call very skeptical of AGW, but I am not skeptical that we are influencing the climate by way of CO2, land use, vegetation changes, diversion of water, etc. There is even evidence that the increasein the number of freshwater ponds and lakes built by people has had a major influence on the carbon cycle.
So to claim we have no impact on the climate is, to my way of thinking, not mcuh different than Trenberth’s reversal of the null hypothesis. The evidence, it seems to me, is pretty clear that we are having a trivial impact on the climate that is not significantly different from the non-human influenced climate that is considered the baseline.
Pekka/Judith
I respectfully disagree that the real issue is so difficult to discuss. The real issue is that some people are unrealistic in the discussions and do not wish to accept the reality of the world as it exists.
Discussion of governmental policy options regarding CO2 emissions are pretty easy to evaluate from any single nations perspective. Building a case that makes sense to justify implementing something to reduce CO2 emissions in a particular nation is a very difficult case to make. The fact that the case is nearly impossible to make in a sensible fashion does not mean it was difficult to discuss, it just means that people do not like to have straightforward discussions on a part of a topic where they know the evidence supporting their conclusion is so weak.
David and Anteros
Can I quote Hubert Lamb on the subject who, after a llifetime of climate research, observed just before his death;
“The idea of climate change has at last taken on with the public after generations which assumed that climate could be taken as constant. But it is easy to notice the common assumption that mans science and modern industry and technology are now so powerful that any change of climate or the environnment must be due to us. It is good for us to be more alert and responsible in our treatment of the environment, but not to have a distorted view of our own importance. Above all, we need more knowledge, education and understanding in these matters.”
Hubert Lamb December 1994
tonyb
Pekka (and Judith), surely the following questions are scientific in nature:
1. Has the global average temperature gone up in the last 100 years? If so how much and when?
2. If it has gone up is any of this due to human activities, or not? If so which ones, how much and when, or not?
3. What have been the physical results of these human induced temperature changes, or not?
3. If these past changes are due to human activities, what are the likely physical results of continued human activities of this sort, or not?
Answers to these questions are now being taught in our schools, based on CAGW biased curricula. I hope to change that as best I can. The question is how best to express it in the language of 5th, 8th, 10th graders, etc.?
I’m ok with with 2, 3, 3. But what is the controversy surrounding #1? Some uncertainty in the how much, but the sign and general magnitude doesn’t seem very controversial?
David
What schools are teaching your points 2, 3, and the 2nd 3?
Hunter, once again, I am not claiming that humans have no impact on climate, just that it is controversial. Issue analysis is neutral. The goal is to articulate the issues as clearly as possible. Given 8 words I might say the core issue is “whether humans are significantly changing the global climate?” Is that better? But then there is the second issue of whether it might be dangerous?, which is very different. But first comes the unresolved issue of whether climate is even changing? That is far from clear in it own right.
David,
Of course there are scientific issues, but my point is that those are not the reason for the controversy.
Looking purely at the science forgetting policy implications the questions on AGW are not the most important and central questions, not even for climate science. They are important only because of the policy implications and there are many different ways of linking scientific knowledge to the policy questions.
To me the only right way is through a thorough analysis based on principles of risk avoidance and decision making under large uncertainties. Because that’s the only approach that I consider really relevant, my conclusions are rather insensitive to many of the points that are subject of most fierce fighting. I don’t care much about, what is certain, but I do care on what is justifiably likely enough and simultaneously serious enough for being taken into account. To me the most important issues have all a likelihood that is well below 50%, because nothing that is more certain is really so bad, but some of the possible lower probability outcomes are.
Risks and uncertainties are always difficult issues to discuss. Therefore both sides try to claim that they have arguments that refer to much higher certainty. To do that they must distort the evidence, and that’s indeed done from both sides.
Pekka Pirilä
It is correct, as you wrote, that this is ”an issue about decision making”, rather than simply ”an issue of science”.
I would put it more like this, however:
This is an issue of decision making, which transcends the science itself.
IOW the ”science” is still the basic underlying issue and point of contention, but there is more than just that.
Let me explain:
As the other thread points out, the “What if they are wrong?” question cannot be simply arm-waved off as ”erroneous arguments presented by skeptics” as you write, but instead these are serious unanswered reservations regarding the scientific validity of the IPCC “mainstream consensus” premise:
a) that AGW, caused principally by human CO2 emissions, has been the primary cause of global warming since 1950 and
b) that it represents a serious potential threat to humanity and our environment unless steps are taken to reduce human CO2 emissions dramatically.
To say that this is only a political “decision making” issue rather than a “scientific” one is to claim that “the science is settled”.
And we both know that this is definitely NOT the case.
The issue at stake is BOTH ”an issue about decision making”, as well as ”an issue of science”.
Max
PS You state that ” There is certain amount of evidence on human influence on climate (with uncertainty about the strength, not the existence)”, but that is NOT the topic in question, Pekka. Very few people would disagree that, over history, human activities have changed some aspect of our local or regional climate by some perceptible amount, BUT that is not the topic in question. It is the “unsettled question” of whether or not the IPCC “mainstream consensus” premise as stated above is supported by the “science”.
And, so far, it isn’t.
Max,
To me question “What, if they are wrong?” is really of little significance, if it’s presented about the climate science. The question “What, it they are right?” is the important one. It is so, because principles of risk management tell that it’s this way.
(“What, it they are wrong?” may become important, if and when seriously damaging major policy decisions are made and implemented based on erroneous data, but the main error is then in the decision makers, not in the scientists. Therefore the principal issue is in decision making.)
Pekka
Taking your logic and extrapolating- if a “climate scientist” feared the potential outcome as being greatly harmful, then it would appear logical that they would be motivated to bias their scientific findings in order to emphasize these potential negative consequences and to thereby influence government decision makers to reach a conclusion they supported.
Sounds very much like reality doesn’t it?
Rob,
I wrote above that many people on both sides distort the evidence exactly for this reason.
There are also many scientists who emphasize the uncertainties in the same spirit as I do. That includes both actual climate scientists and other scientists like environmental economists who discuss the policy issues. As an example Knutti and Hegerl discuss in their 2008 review article the importance of the high climate sensitivity tail and the unfortunate difficulties in determining strong bounds for that. From the economists Weitzmann emphasizes perhaps most strongly the low probability high risk tail. It’s a well known issue, but many think that they should avoid those discussions and simplify the arguments implying or claiming explicitly larger certainty for their damage scenarios – or for the certainty that nothing serious can happen.
Pekka
I am afraid that I will have to disagree with you.
I’m sure you will not deny that a claim is being made by IPCC that human GHG emissions (primarily CO2) have been the principal cause of global warming since 1950 and that this represents a serious potential threat to humanity and our environment unless CO2 emissions are reduced dramatically.
So the pertinent question is, “what if they (IPCC) are wrong?”, i.e. “what if this claim is not supported by empirical scientific evidence?”.
The “burden of proof” (in this case “the burden to provide empirical scientific evidence to support the claim” lies with the party making the claim (in this case IPCC and the so-called “mainstream consensus” group of scientists).
It is not up to those who are rationally skeptical of this claim to prove an alternate hypothesis.
“What if they are right?” is an interesting hypothetical question that can have an impact on political deliberations, but can really only be answered if the scientific validity of the claim has been confirmed. This is not the case today. I am sure that you will agree that “the science is NOT settled”.
Let’s not get the horse before the cart here, Pekka. That is simply a “cop out” by those who know that they are unable to provide the empirical evidence required to substantiate their claim.
The issue at stake is a controversy regarding the scientific validity of the claim being made by IPCC.
All the word-smithing and rationalizing in the world is not going to change that.
Max
David,
Thank you for your clarification. I would find your eight word restatement very good. The answer, as we see from the evidence, would be “no”.
In fact, I think later today I will see if Heartland Institute has a basic membership and join as a gesture in support of free speech, freedom of association and freedom in general. Enough of the wannabe censors seeking to rationalize the shutdown of organizations like HI dominating the public square. Either we still have freedom in this country or we don’t. Forging documents and pretending that think tanks are wicked lobbyists is not advancing freedom.
Max,
You write as if IPCC would be simply right or wrong or as if there could be a proof ot essential knowledge..
In reality there’s is very much true in the IPCC reports. There are also some outright errors and more questionable interpretation and bad formulation.
In reality there’s no proof, but there’s a lot of evidence. Evidence is not absolute, but some of it is very strong and some rather weak.
There are also many and very essential factors outside climate science that influence wise decision making. The real problem is in making sense of all this. That’s not the task of IPCC or climate scientists. They provide their share of the background information. They should do it as “honest broker”, but many of the scientists fail to do that, and on many issues the IPCC reports fail also to some extent on that although not as severely as often claimed.
The real problem is in the decision making process. Politicians are accustomed in handling controversial issues but they can do that reasonably well only, when the issues are of a type familiar enough for them. The issues of climate change are far from familiar. Therefore the political basic attitudes lead to so extreme polarization. Some of them are ready to accept and believe the worst catastrophe scenarios while others are convinced that there is not really anything to worry about. Their views are so far apart that they lack the basis for reaching a justifiable compromise.
The controversy that David appears to be willing to teach is not really there and to the tiny extent it still is, it’s not a significant component in the real issue. What would be worthwhile to teach at some level is the difficulty in using scientific evidence in decision making. The book The Honest Broker by Roger A. Pielke Jr. could actually be used as a text book in that. Not as a source that gives always right answers, but as basis for further discussion and also as a source of many good arguments. On what level of education that would be possible is another question and I leave answering that to others.
Pekka
You discuss the IPCC reports and concede that there are errors and exaggerations there.
You then bring up the concept of “proof” (something I have not discussed, because this does not exist in science).
I have simply stated that the empirical evidence based on actual physical observations or reproducible experimentation does not support the IPCC claims regarding AGW.
As someone who is rational skeptical of these claims I will continue to consider them uncorroborated until such empirical evidence can be supplied.
It is really quite simple.
It’s known as the “scientific method”.
As a practical matter, I see that the large uncertainties regarding natural versus anthropogenic causes for past climate change are simply too great to be able to draw any meaningful conclusions or make any meaningful projections for the future.
And you have been unable to provide the empirical data to convince me otherwise..
Max
“Would you disagree that humans have an ‘influence’ on the climate?”
Depends on what you mean by climate. And what you mean by influence.
Andrew
Humans could be influencing the climate to not change, just as much as change. Unless you can get scientific and quantifiable about this stuff, you are just writing poetry.
Andrew
Very well put Andrew. Saying there is an influence but it is not meaningful, or significant, or measurable is playing a semantic game.
Andrew and David –
You’re both missing the point that you have to start with ‘some’. It’s not poetry, it merely an acceptance of the result of human agency. The questions about whether it is noticeable or measurable then become relevant and worth asking.
You mistake me for some one who thinks those questions are already answered. They are not.
But they are worth asking.
How can you attempt to quantify something while denying it exists?
David said;
“1. Has the global average temperature gone up in the last 100 years? If so how much and when?”
Wouldn’t it be more interesting to rephrase that as in the last 100,200, or 300 years?
tonyb
Every cool period of the past ten thousand years has been followed by a warm period. There were many periods that were similar to the Little Ice Age. Every one of those was followed by a warm period that is similar to the current warm period. Every warm period, before this warm period, that was similar to this warm period, was followed by a cool period. This will happen again. When something in nature keeps repeating, expect it to happen again.
CO2 is the only parameter that we keep track of that is out of the bounds of the past ten thousand years. There is no way that a man-made fraction of a trace gas can change that. Look at the data. This warm period naturally followed the cool period before it.
The next cool period will naturally follow this warm period.
Only questionable consensus theory and very poor performing consensus models say we will get a lot warmer. Actual data is well inside the bounds of the past ten thousand years.
Bad Andrew
I have not concluded that the evidence presented to date shows that human activities are having a major impact on our climate such that they represent a significant potential threat to humanity or our environment (and that’s what the discussion is really all about).
Certain promoters of this premise realize that it is not tenable, therefore they want to change the discussion to one of whether “humans have some influence on the climate”.
Locally this is certainly the case.
Building large concrete cities where there was once grassland or agricultural fields causes local temperature to go up significantly because of the UHI effect, as has been shown with many examples.
Large dams (such as Aswan) cause changes in downstream flood patterns.
But one should not let the discussion move away from the basic point of contention – it’s a diversionary tactic.
Max
Max,
I appreciate your concrete examples. However, I’m still not sure if they represent ‘climate change.’ Are they supposed to? The first is a slight temperature change. That happens all the time anyway. The second has nothing to do with temperature at all. Is temperature change a requirement for climate change? Do you always measure climate change the same way every time? Is it different for different locations and different times? Does anyone have a matrix for answering these kinds of questions?
Andrew
Bad Andrew
We are quibbling about semantics.
The point is that the IPCC crowd have made a claim.
That claim is that AGW has been the primary cause of global warming (i.e. global “climate change”, as they define this term) since 1950.
The claim goes on to project that this will rep[resent a significant threat to our environment and human society, UNLESS (an here’s the kicker) we dramatically reduce our CO2 emissions.
The promoters of these claims are unable to provide empirical scientific evidence (from actual physical observations or reproducible experimentation) to validate their claims – all they have are model simulations based on doubtful hypothetical inputs.
So they are trying to change the argument to one of “whether humans have in the past in some way changed our planet’s climate”.
Getting into this argument is falling into the diversionary trap of those who are unable to support their claim and are therefore changing the subject.
Max
Max,
I agree that your point is the primary issue. But it’s not the only issue. Climate Science has a lot of issues.
Andrew
There are so many uncertainties, where do you start? I choose to start with the CO2/temperature link. Where is the empirical evidence? I suppose their theory could be right, except I get stuck on the Second Law of Thermodynamics — where am I going wrong? Have they evidence that the 2nd Law is false?
THAT would overturn modern physics!
“How can you attempt to quantify something while denying it exists?”
You are misrepresenting the argument. Mine/our argument is simple, and would apply to any saleman who came to the door. This is it: “Show me.” It’s not about denying the salesman has a product. It’s about not buying until the salesman shows you his product has real value. Climate speculations? Squiggly lines? Child, please.
Andrew
tonyb, how about the last 1,000 years?
The Ultimate Godwin violation; Hitler sued by Heartland;
Take a look at the WUWT thread. What % of “skeptics” do you suppose are taking him at his word.
Also – if it’s true that the “fake” document was part of what Heartland emailed to him under his impersonation of someone else, how would it be “fake?”
Joshua –
Do you really think that the comments at WUWT are the entirety of ‘skeptical’ thought? That would be as bad as believing that the cheering section on Greg Ladens blog is the entirety of ‘warmist’ thought. Or are you just indulging in a little tribal bias?
As for your second point, I think that Gliecks post makes fairly clear that the faked memo was *not* sent to him by Heartland, but he merely felt that what they had sent him confirmed what he had seen, and was oh so willing to believe…
kch,
1- Joshua, if he cannot either reference his mommy or tribalism has nothing to add.
We now know, from multiple experiences, that Gleick i sa liar and now a thief. So he stole them, but the obvious forgery was not his- he swears it!
Which brings us to point 2:
2- It will turn out Gleick (or a pal) did forge the document in question.
Hunter –
1 – I don’t think it’s useful to reduce anyone to a caricature. I’ve read a great deal of Joshua’s stuff, and while it is true that he is frequently (and by turns) sophomoric, sophistic, addicted to argumentation by rhetorical question, smarmy and monomaniacal on his own idealogic/moral touch points, he actually has made me (and others I believe) take a second look at my own biases and reasoning for my beliefs and position on climate issues. He is, in the end, a useful addition to the discussion. Would you rather have Michael?
2 – Possibly, but I’d rather wait for the investigation to proceed – and as I’ve said, I fully expect Gleick to do his duty as a citizen and help track down the culprit. If he doesn’t, well, I will modify my acceptance of his word (not that I really think he’s going to care what I think…).
“”Also – if it’s true that the “fake” document was part of what Heartland emailed to him under his impersonation of someone else, how would it be “fake?”””
If he didn’t fake it than somebody he gave those illegally obtained documents too, did ‘fake’ them or gave eventually gave them to somebody who did ‘fake’ them.
‘Fakegate’ will be at the top of alarmist scams in the climate science debate.
What percentage of believers took the docs Gleick stole and forged at face value?
From what I saw, quite a few. It confirmed their biases. What else is new?
Peter Glieck admits to a crime. Sad day.
kch –
I think it’s a fairly representative sample. The balance is somewhat off from here, but mostly only because there are more non-“skeptics” that post here. I’ve been told over at WUWT that “most” of them there fall under the “we agree it’s warming, we just don’t know how much or how much is attributable to ACO2” category.
So even if it isn’t fully representative – you show me a “skeptical” site where the majority of commenters are taking Gleick at his word.
Hey – I’m not sure that I’m taking him at his word on this. Without conclusive evidence, I think it’s wise to suspend judgement either way.
It is not unheard of for the busted criminal to make partial confessions.
Gleick’s confession seems very partial.
Basically a “mommy, I was bad but they were worse!” defense.
Joshua –
The early run of comments on almost anything and anywhere will be highly partisan, as the partisans are usually the most vocal on any subject. Look at the crap spewed about Heartland, or climategate, or any public dispute. It usually takes a while for the tempers to settle down. One of the reasons I read the comments here, or Lucia’s or Climate audit is that the signal-to-noise is greater than at the more partisan sites.
So no, I don’t think that is is anything but a biased reaction to tar the whole of the either side with any one blog’s comment section – be it WUWT or Romm.
As for taking him at his word, I will, but throwing himself at the mercy of the court (which is really what his mea culpa is) will require him to assist Heartland in good faith in finding the author of the fake, defamatory memo. If he doesn’t do that, he will lose all claim to credibility, IMHO.
Keep watching. I think that the balance you are expecting will not materialize. And once again, I didn’t “tar the whole” of either side. I spoke about “most.” I also didn’t say that WUWT are the “entirety of ‘skeptical’ thought”
It is difficult to get anywhere in a discussion if you keep mischaracterizing what I say
Anyway, from what I’ve seen so far, my speculation has been born out.
Joshua –
Hey, you pointed me to WUWT as your example. You’ll have to pardon me for not realizing that you didn’t want to use it to extrapolate to the whole of ‘skepticdom’.
Also, I don’t expect ‘balance’. I expect tempers and emotions to cool, letting people think through their positions, rather than just reacting.
And really, we’re talking about the reactions to two different parts of the mea culpa – that Gleick misrepresented his way to the Heartland documents (which I think I’ve seen no disagreement with), and that he did not write the fake memo (which I think I’ve seen a great deal of skepticism).
As we’re starting to drift in angels-dancing-on-the-head-of-a-pin territory here, I agree that this conversation is going nowhere fast. So, adieu. It’s been fun, and thanks for reading…
kch –
Again, I offered WUWT as evidence that would be relevant. If you see that as the same as portraying it as the “entirety of ‘skepticism,” knock yourself out. I can’t stop you. Nor can I stop you from misconstruing my comments to “tar the whole” of either side. Both mischaracterizations were completely on you.
And clearly, my speculation was about what the reaction would be among “most” skeptics w/r/t the “fake” document. I have no idea why you went back to bring up reactions to his admission to obtaining the documents through misrepresentation.
In Gleick’s words:
Gleick, Peter H. “The Origin of the Heartland Documents.” Huffington Post, February 20, 2012. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-h-gleick/-the-origin-of-the-heartl_b_1289669.html
Sorry, too late. Glad you guys are on top of this! :-)
Looks like someone hit the “italics” button.
I love what you guys are usually up too. This
type of clever work and coverage! Keep up the superb works guys I’ve incorporated you guys to blogroll.
Incredible! This blog looks exactly like my old one!
It’s on a completely different topic but it has pretty much the same page layout and design. Excellent choice of colors!