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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Feb 21, 2012 - 06:41am PT
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follow the money (from wsj):
The Not-So-Vast Conspiracy
Stolen documents show the tiny budget of global warming skeptics..Article Comments (32) more in Opinion | Find New $LINKTEXTFIND$ ».
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When did it become received media wisdom that global warming skepticism was all the work of shadowy right-wing groups lavishly funded by oil companies? As best we can tell, it started with a 1995 Harper's magazine article claiming to expose this "high-powered engine of disinformation." Today anyone who raises a doubt about the causes of global warming is accused of fronting for, say, Exxon, whatever the facts.
Now comes a rare glimpse inside the allegedly antiscience behemoth, with the online publication last week of documents purloined from the conservative Heartland Institute. The files appear to contain detailed financial, donor and personnel information and outline the think-tank's projects. Chicago-based Heartland says one of the documents is fake and warns that others may have been altered.
Given the coverage the story has generated, you'd think some vast conspiracy had been uncovered. Heartland is, according to the Associated Press, "one of the loudest voices denying human-caused global warming, hosting the largest international scientific conference of skeptics on climate change." The Vancouver Sun reports that it is "heavily funded by right-wing industrialist Charles Koch," while the Virginian-Pilot dubs it "the ideological center of the denial movement."
So how flush is Heartland? The documents show the group is expecting revenues of $7.7 million this year, mostly from private donations and grants. Mr. Koch's "heavy" funding came to $25,000 in 2011, though the Heartland "Fundraising Plan" has it hoping for an increase in 2012. To put those numbers in not-for-profit perspective, last year the Natural Resources Defense Council reported $95.4 million in operating revenues, while the World Wildlife Fund took in $238.5 million.
Press coverage has focused in particular on Heartland's plans to produce and distribute "educational material suitable for K-12 students on global warming that isn't alarmist or overtly political." Heartland is budgeting $200,000 this year for the effort, which in the past has "had only limited success," per one of the documents. Little wonder if teachers aren't returning Heartland's calls: Last year the World Wildlife Fund spent $68.5 million on "public education" alone.
As for "the largest international scientific conference of skeptics," Heartland will, according to the documents, spend all of $388,000 this year on the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change. That's against the $6.5 million that the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change costs Western taxpayers annually, and the $2.6 billion the White House wants to spend next year on research into "the global changes that have resulted primarily from global over-dependence on fossil fuels."
In the pages of Rolling Stone last summer, Al Gore warned of the "Polluters and Ideologues [sic] . . . . spending hundreds of millions of dollars each year on misleading advertisements in the mass media." He had the wrong spenders.
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Feb 21, 2012 - 06:53am PT
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again, from wsj:
Concerned Scientists Reply on Global Warming
The authors of the Jan. 27 Wall Street Journal op-ed, 'No Need to Panic about Global Warming,' respond to their critics
Editor's Note: The authors of the following letter, listed below, are also the signatories of "No Need to Panic About Global Warming," an op-ed that appeared in the Journal on January 27. This letter responds to criticisms of the op-ed made by Kevin Trenberth and 37 others in a letter published Feb. 1, and by Robert Byer of the American Physical Society in a letter published Feb. 6.
The interest generated by our Wall Street Journal op-ed of Jan. 27, "No Need to Panic about Global Warming," is gratifying but so extensive that we will limit our response to the letter to the editor the Journal published on Feb. 1, 2012 by Kevin Trenberth and 37 other signatories, and to the Feb. 6 letter by Robert Byer, President of the American Physical Society. (We, of course, thank the writers of supportive letters.)
We agree with Mr. Trenberth et al. that expertise is important in medical care, as it is in any matter of importance to humans or our environment. Consider then that by eliminating fossil fuels, the recipient of medical care (all of us) is being asked to submit to what amounts to an economic heart transplant. According to most patient bills of rights, the patient has a strong say in the treatment decision. Natural questions from the patient are whether a heart transplant is really needed, and how successful the diagnostic team has been in the past.
In this respect, an important gauge of scientific expertise is the ability to make successful predictions. When predictions fail, we say the theory is "falsified" and we should look for the reasons for the failure. Shown in the nearby graph is the measured annual temperature of the earth since 1989, just before the first report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Also shown are the projections of the likely increase of temperature, as published in the Summaries of each of the four IPCC reports, the first in the year 1990 and the last in the year 2007.
These projections were based on IPCC computer models of how increased atmospheric CO2 should warm the earth. Some of the models predict higher or lower rates of warming, but the projections shown in the graph and their extensions into the distant future are the basis of most studies of environmental effects and mitigation policy options. Year-to-year fluctuations and discrepancies are unimportant; longer-term trends are significant.
From the graph it appears that the projections exaggerate, substantially, the response of the earth's temperature to CO2 which increased by about 11% from 1989 through 2011. Furthermore, when one examines the historical temperature record throughout the 20th century and into the 21st, the data strongly suggest a much lower CO2 effect than almost all models calculate.
The Trenberth letter tells us that "computer models have recently shown that during periods when there is a smaller increase of surface temperatures, warming is occurring elsewhere in the climate system, typically in the deep ocean." The ARGO system of diving buoys is providing increasingly reliable data on the temperature of the upper layers of the ocean, where much of any heat from global warming must reside. But much like the surface temperature shown in the graph, the heat content of the upper layers of the world's oceans is not increasing nearly as fast as IPCC models predict, perhaps not increasing at all. Why should we now believe exaggerating IPCC models that tell us of "missing heat" hiding in the one place where it cannot yet be reliably measured—the deep ocean?
Given this dubious track record of prediction, it is entirely reasonable to ask for a second opinion. We have offered ours. With apologies for any immodesty, we all have enjoyed distinguished careers in climate science or in key science and engineering disciplines (such as physics, aeronautics, geology, biology, forecasting) on which climate science is based.
Trenberth et al. tell us that the managements of major national academies of science have said that "the science is clear, the world is heating up and humans are primarily responsible." Apparently every generation of humanity needs to relearn that Mother Nature tells us what the science is, not authoritarian academy bureaucrats or computer models.
One reason to be on guard, as we explained in our original op-ed, is that motives other than objective science are at work in much of the scientific establishment. All of us are members of major academies and scientific societies, but we urge Journal readers not to depend on pompous academy pronouncements—on what we say—but to follow the motto of the Royal Society of Great Britain, one of the oldest learned societies in the world: nullius in verba—take nobody's word for it. As we said in our op-ed, everyone should look at certain stubborn facts that don't fit the theory espoused in the Trenberth letter, for example—the graph of surface temperature above, and similar data for the temperature of the lower atmosphere and the upper oceans.
What are we to make of the letter's claim: "Climate experts know that the long-term warming trend has not abated in the past decade. In fact, it was the warmest decade on record." We don't see any warming trend after the year 2000 in the graph. It is true that the years 2000-2010 were perhaps 0.2 C warmer than the preceding 10 years. But the record indicates that long before CO2 concentrations of the atmosphere began to increase, the earth began to warm in fits and starts at the end of the Little Ice Age—hundreds of years ago. This long term-trend is quite likely to produce several warm years in a row. The question is how much of the warming comes from CO2 and how much is due to other, both natural and anthropogenic, factors?
There have been many times in the past when there were warmer decades. It may have been warmer in medieval times, when the Vikings settled Greenland, and when wine was exported from England. Many proxy indicators show that the Medieval Warming was global in extent. And there were even warmer periods a few thousand years ago during the Holocene Climate Optimum. The fact is that there are very powerful influences on the earth's climate that have nothing to do with human-generated CO2. The graph strongly suggests that the IPCC has greatly underestimated the natural sources of warming (and cooling) and has greatly exaggerated the warming from CO2.
The Trenberth letter states: "Research shows that more than 97% of scientists actively publishing in the field agree that climate change is real and human caused." However, the claim of 97% support is deceptive. The surveys contained trivial polling questions that even we would agree with. Thus, these surveys find that large majorities agree that temperatures have increased since 1800 and that human activities have some impact.
But what is being disputed is the size and nature of the human contribution to global warming. To claim, as the Trenberth letter apparently does, that disputing this constitutes "extreme views that are out of step with nearly every other climate expert" is peculiar indeed.
One might infer from the Trenberth letter that scientific facts are determined by majority vote. Some postmodern philosophers have made such claims. But scientific facts come from observations, experiments and careful analysis, not from the near-unanimous vote of some group of people.
The continued efforts of the climate establishment to eliminate "extreme views" can acquire a seriously threatening nature when efforts are directed at silencing scientific opposition. In our op-ed we mentioned the campaign circa 2003 to have Dr. Chris de Freitas removed not only from his position as editor of the journal Climate Research, but from his university job as well. Much of that campaign is documented in Climategate emails, where one of the signatories of the Trenberth et al. letter writes: "I believe that a boycott against publishing, reviewing for, or even citing articles from Climate Research [then edited by Dr. de Freitas] is certainly warranted, but perhaps the minimum action that should be taken."
Or consider the resignation last year of Wolfgang Wagner, editor-in-chief of the journal Remote Sensing. In a fulsome resignation editorial eerily reminiscent of past recantations by political and religious heretics, Mr. Wagner confessed to his "sin" of publishing a properly peer-reviewed paper by University of Alabama scientists Roy Spencer and William Braswell containing the finding that IPCC models exaggerate the warming caused by increasing CO2.
The Trenberth letter tells us that decarbonization of the world's economy would "drive decades of economic growth." This is not a scientific statement nor is there evidence it is true. A premature global-scale transition from hydrocarbon fuels would require massive government intervention to support the deployment of more expensive energy technology. If there were economic advantages to investing in technology that depends on taxpayer support, companies like Beacon Power, Evergreen Solar, Solar Millenium, SpectraWatt, Solyndra, Ener1 and the Renewable Energy Development Corporation would be prospering instead of filing for bankruptcy in only the past few months.
The European experience with green technologies has also been discouraging. A study found that every new "green job" in Spain destroyed more than two existing jobs and diverted capital that would have created new jobs elsewhere in the economy. More recently, European governments have been cutting subsidies for expensive CO2-emissionless energy technologies, not what one would expect if such subsidies were stimulating otherwise languid economies. And as we pointed out in our op-ed, it is unlikely that there will be any environmental benefit from the reduced CO2 emissions associated with green technologies, which are based on the demonization of CO2.
Turning to the letter of the president of the American Physical Society (APS), Robert Byer, we read, "The statement [on climate] does not declare, as the signatories of the letter [our op-ed] suggest, that the human contribution to climate change is incontrovertible." This seems to suggest that APS does not in fact consider the science on this key question to be settled.
Yet here is the critical paragraph from the statement that caused the resignation of Nobel laureate Ivar Giaever and many other long-time members of the APS: "The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth's physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now." No reasonable person can read this and avoid the conclusion that APS is declaring the human impact "incontrovertible." Otherwise there would be no logical link from "global warming" to the shrill call for mitigation.
The APS response to the concerns of its membership was better than that of any other scientific society, but it was not democratic. The management of APS took months to review the statement quoted above, and it eventually declared that not a word needed to be changed, though some 750 words were added to try to explain what the original 157 words really meant. APS members were permitted to send in comments but the comments were never made public.
In spite of the obstinacy of some in APS management, APS members of good will are supporting the establishment of a politics-free, climate physics study group within the Society. If successful, it will facilitate much needed discussion, debate, and independent research in the physics of climate.
In summary, science progresses by testing predictions against real world data obtained from direct observations and rigorous experiments. The stakes in the global-warming debate are much too high to ignore this observational evidence and declare the science settled. Though there are many more scientists who are extremely well qualified and have reached the same conclusions we have, we stress again that science is not a democratic exercise and our conclusions must be based on observational evidence.
The computer-model predictions of alarming global warming have seriously exaggerated the warming by CO2 and have underestimated other causes. Since CO2 is not a pollutant but a substantial benefit to agriculture, and since its warming potential has been greatly exaggerated, it is time for the world to rethink its frenzied pursuit of decarbonization at any cost.
Claude Allegre, former director of the Institute for the Study of the Earth, University of Paris; J. Scott Armstrong, cofounder of the Journal of Forecasting and the International Journal of Forecasting; Jan Breslow, head of the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics and Metabolism, Rockefeller University; Roger Cohen, fellow, American Physical Society; Edward David, member, National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences; William Happer, professor of physics, Princeton; Michael Kelly, professor of technology, University of Cambridge, U.K.; William Kininmonth, former head of climate research at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology; Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric sciences, MIT; James McGrath, professor of chemistry, Virginia Technical University; Rodney Nichols, former president and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences; Burt Rutan, aerospace engineer, designer of Voyager and SpaceShipOne; Harrison H. Schmitt, Apollo 17 astronaut and former U.S. senator; Nir Shaviv, professor of astrophysics, Hebrew University, Jerusalem; Henk Tennekes, former director, Royal Dutch Meteorological Service; Antoninio Zichichi, president of the World Federation of Scientists, Geneva.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Feb 21, 2012 - 02:26pm PT
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The point Ed makes is true of any study that requires statistical evidence. We always measure against a null hyposthesis, giving the statistics of fit a certain confidence level. Disbelievers (I like that word better than "skeptics," because all statisticians should be skeptics) seize on that confidence level to harp on the fact that there is "uncertainty" about the hypothesis in question.
As an econometrician, I have to deal with this all the time, but I also have to deal with one other complicating factor: the inability of econmetricians to obtain valid experimental data. While we don't have a "control earth" in climate science, we have solid laboratory experimentation that forms the foundation of the statistical modeling of the earth's climate. This fact makes the estimated statistics of fit (for example, the t-statistics of the individual regressors or the R-squared of the model) of climate models much closer to accurate values than what we econometricians face.
I know there will remain a few holdouts among climate scientists who don't accept the warming hypotheses of the overwhelming majority of studies, but I wouldn't use that as a basis for rejecting what has been solid statistical and scientific study. It seems to me absurd to pretend that anthropogenic climate change cannot be occurring just because we can't tell you precisely how warm it will be tomorrow. What we should be doing is determining appropriate responses based on marginal costs and benefits, adjusted for the risk of uncertainty.
John
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Elcapinyoazz
Social climber
Joshua Tree
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Feb 21, 2012 - 02:34pm PT
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My reply to deniers is short and effective:
If you don't believe in anthropogenic global warming, please go climb in your F250 Superduty, close the garage door, start that moth#$%CKer up, and then sit on the tailgate with a half-rack of Keystone light and finish it. Give me a ring when you're done with the beer, I suspect you'll be dead before my phone starts ringing.
And if you don't have a F250, just haul your BBQ grill in there.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Feb 21, 2012 - 06:15pm PT
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JEleazarian:
The point Ed makes is true of any study that requires statistical evidence.
And speaking of which, John, if you haven't already read Foster & Rahmstorf 2011 you might find it interesting. A nifty application of time series modeling where supercomputers are more the rule.
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/6/4/044022/fulltext/
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blahblah
Gym climber
Boulder
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Feb 21, 2012 - 07:12pm PT
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My reply to deniers is short and effective:
If you don't believe in anthropogenic global warming, please go climb in your F250 Superduty, close the garage door, start that moth#$%CKer up, and then sit on the tailgate with a half-rack of Keystone light and finish it. Give me a ring when you're done with the beer, I suspect you'll be dead before my phone starts ringing.
And if you don't have a F250, just haul your BBQ grill in there.
Sorry but that's an analogy FAIL.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Feb 22, 2012 - 04:56pm PT
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And speaking of which, John, if you haven't already read Foster & Rahmstorf 2011 you might find it interesting. A nifty application of time series modeling where supercomputers are more the rule.
Thanks, Larry. When I first started forecasting, Box-Jenkins time series models were somewhat in vogue, but the computing power was limited. Thus, it was interesting to see the supercomputers do their thing.
John
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Feb 22, 2012 - 06:16pm PT
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Yeah, I thought the Box-Jenkins stuff was cool when it broke. Still have their 1976 book on my shelf with many bookmarks, though nowadays I usually look stuff up in my smarter brother's book instead, or write him a note when that fails.
It's been a natural step from early Box-Jenkins to ARMAX and mixed-effects modeling. I haven't done much in the frequency domain, although that's on my impossibly long list of things to learn a little more about.
S&R 2011 use an iterative method for specifying their lag structure. I understand the rationale but it would be interesting to see how stable the results from that step prove to be as new data come in.
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Xela
climber
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Feb 22, 2012 - 06:37pm PT
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Still have their 1976 book on my shelf with many bookmarks, though nowadays I usually look stuff up in my smarter brother's book instead, or write him a note when that fails.
Out of curiosity, are you joking or is James your brother? Smart family if it is indeed the case. Though I have to say I despised the class that used his text, but that had more to do with the instructor than the material.
-Dave
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Feb 22, 2012 - 08:04pm PT
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Nope, same guy. Here's a recent photo of the Econbrowser that I don't think he'd mind my posting (on right).
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Feb 25, 2012 - 12:08pm PT
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"The Gleick episode exposes again a movement that disdains arguing with its critics, choosing demonization over persuasion and debate. A confident movement would face and crush its critics if its case were unassailable, as it claims."
here's the rest:
Why the Climate Skeptics Are Winning
Too many of their opponents are intellectual thugs.
Steven F. Hayward
March 5, 2012, Vol. 17, No. 24
The forlorn and increasingly desperate climate campaign achieved a new level of ineptitude last week when what had looked like a minor embarrassment for one of its critics—the Chicago-based Heartland Institute—turned out to be a full-fledged catastrophe for itself. A moment’s reflection on the root of this episode points to why the climate campaign is out of (greenhouse) gas.
In an obvious attempt to inflict a symmetrical Climategate-style scandal on the skeptic community, someone representing himself as a Heartland Institute insider “leaked” internal documents for Heartland’s most recent board of directors meeting to a fringe environmental blog, along with a photocopy of a supposed Heartland “strategy memo” outlining a plan to disseminate a public school curriculum aimed at “dissuading teachers from teaching science.”
This ham-handed phrase (one of many) should have been a tipoff to treat the document dump with some . . . skepticism (a trait that has gone missing from much of the climate science community). But more than a few environmental blogs and mainstream news outlets ran with the story of how this “leak” exposed the nefarious “antiscience” Neanderthals of Heartland and their fossil fuel paymasters. But the strategy memo is a fake, probably created because the genuine internal documents are fairly ho-hum. It seems the climate campaign is now taking its tactics from Dan “fake but accurate” Rather.
Why Heartland? And how did the “leaker” get his hands on authentic Heartland board materials that are obviously the source for the faked strategy memo? The Heartland Institute sponsors the most significant annual gathering of climate skeptics, usually in New York, Chicago, or Washington, D.C.—a conference that attracts hundreds of scientists and activists from around the globe, including most of the top skeptical scientists, such as MIT’s Richard Lindzen, Yale’s Robert Mendelsohn, and career EPA official Alan Carlin. By assembling a critical mass of serious dissenting opinion, the Heartland conference dispels the favorite climate campaign talking point that there’s virtually no one of repute, and no arguments of merit, outside the -so-called consensus of imminent climate catastrophe.
The Heartland conferences have been too big for the media to ignore completely, though coverage has been spare and grudging. The conferences are also a morale booster for skeptics, who tend to be isolated and relentlessly assailed in their scattered outposts. It is worth adding that Heartland has always extended invitations to the leading “mainstream” figures to speak or debate at the conference, including Al Gore, NASA’s James Hansen, and senior officials from the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (Heartland typically receives no response from such figures.)
The most likely instigator of an anti-Heartland provocation would be someone from among the political activists of the environmental movement, such as the merry pranksters of Greenpeace, who have been known to paw through the garbage cans of climate skeptics looking for evidence of payoffs from the fossil fuel industry (which, contrary to left-wing paranoia, has tended rather to be a generous funder of the climate catastrophe campaign). But shortly after the document dump, Ross Kaminsky, an unpaid senior fellow and former Heartland board member now with the American Spectator, noticed something odd in the digital fingerprint of the “strategy memo.” It had been scanned on an Epson printer/scanner on Monday, February 13, on the West Coast (not in the Midwest, where Heartland is located), just one day before the entire document dump appeared online for the first time. Like the famous little detail of when and how Alger Hiss disposed of his old Ford, this date and location will turn out to be a key piece of evidence unraveling the full story, some of which still remains shrouded.
So how did the official Heartland documents get out? Someone claiming to be a board member emailed an unsuspecting Heartland staffer, asking that a set of board documents be sent to a new email address. This act may have violated California and Illinois criminal statutes prohibiting false representation, and perhaps some federal statutes pertaining to wire fraud as well.
Kaminsky and a second blogger, Steven Mosher, piled up the anomalies: The leaked board documents were not scanned but were original software-produced documents, which moreover have a time stamp from Heartland’s Central time zone. Hence the “strategy memo,” if authentic, would have had to be obtained by some other channel. These and other clues led both Kaminsky and Mosher to go public with the accusation that the most likely perpetrator was Peter Gleick, a semi-prominent environmental scientist in Oakland, California.
Gleick is known chiefly for his work on water issues, for which he enjoys a deserved reputation for his data-driven research (though he gets the remedies wrong). He has been as well a peripheral but aggressive figure in the climate wars, notable for the angry and politicized tone of his participation. Gleick is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and was, until two weeks ago, the chairman of an American Geophysical Union task force on scientific -ethics. He’s also a columnist for Forbes magazine’s website and a recipient of one of those MacArthur Foundation “genius” grants that typically go to the trendy and politically correct.
Making a direct accusation as Kaminsky and Mosher did is a strong and potentially libelous move, and the green blogosphere closed ranks quickly around Gleick. One poster wrote: “I hope that Mr. Kaminsky will be prepared [to] fully retract and apologize to Dr. Gleick once he is ruled out as the possible culprit.” But then the other shoe dropped: Gleick confessed on Monday, February 20, that he was the person who had deceived Heartland into emailing their board documents. Gleick claimed, though, that he had received the phony strategy memo anonymously early in the year by mail. He explained in a column for the Huffington Post: “I attempted to confirm the accuracy of the information in this document. In an effort to do so, and in a serious lapse of my own and professional judgment and ethics, I solicited and received additional materials directly from the Heartland Institute under someone else’s name.”
Gleick’s story doesn’t add up, given that many of the details in the phony “strategy memo” could only have been composed by someone with prior access to the complete board materials that Gleick says he subsequently sought out. So far Gleick is the only person known to have had access to the Heartland internal board documents. And he has not been forthcoming about the details of the phony memo. Was there a postmark? Did he keep the envelope and the original document that he scanned? Why does he think he was singled out to receive this information, rather than a reporter? The only thing missing right now to make Gleick’s story weaker is an old Woodstock typewriter.
Then there is the content of the memo itself, which tellingly is written in the first person but bears no one’s name as an author. One is supposed to presume it came from Heartland’s president, Joe Bast, but it is not quite his style. Megan McArdle of the Atlantic sums it up nicely: “It reads like it was written from the secret villain lair in a Batman comic. By an intern.” Numerous observers have pointed to items in the memo that are strikingly inauthentic or alien to the conservative think tank world, but one in particular strikes me—a curious passage about the need for “expanded communication”:
Efforts at places such as Forbes are especially important now that they have begun to allow high-profile climate scientists (such as Gleick) to post warmist science essays that counter our own. This influential audience has usually been reliably anti-climate and it is important to keep opposing voices out. Efforts might also include cultivating more neutral voices with big audiences (such as [Andrew] Revkin at DotEarth/NYTimes, who has a well-known antipathy for some of the more extreme AGW [anthropogenic global warming] communicators . . .
As curious as the reference to Gleick and Forbes is (Gleick shares space at Forbes with Heartland’s James Taylor, which is another interesting circumstance), the reference to Andy Revkin is more intriguing. Revkin is a New York Times science blogger who reports climate issues fairly straight up, though his own sympathies are with the climate campaign. Perhaps because he is basically sympathetic, Revkin’s occasional departures from the party line have been a source of annoyance for more ardent climate campaigners; one of the emails from the first cache of leaked Climategate documents in 2009 complained that Revkin wasn’t “reliable,” and University of Illinois climate alarmist Michael Schlesinger threatened Revkin directly with the “big cutoff” if he didn’t mend his ways. Was the language in the phony Heartland memo another attempt to try to shame Revkin into falling in line by suggesting he’s not hostile enough towards climate skeptics?
After Gleick’s semi-confession, Revkin wrote for the Times that “Gleick’s use of deception in pursuit of his cause after years of calling out climate deception has destroyed his credibility and harmed others,” and that his actions “surely will sustain suspicion that he created the summary [strategy memo].”
Gleick looks set to be spending a good chunk of his MacArthur genius prize winnings on lawyers; he’s retained the same criminal attorney that Andrew Fastow of Enron used for his defense against fraud charges. And Gleick has hired Clinton/Gore crisis manager Chris Lehane. Heartland, for its part, has set up a legal defense fund to pursue a civil case against Gleick, presenting the ultimate irony: -Gleick’s attack may well help Heartland raise more money.
More than a few observers have asked why anyone should trust Gleick’s scientific judgment if his judgment about how to deal with climate skeptics is so bad. -Gleick’s defense of his motives would be laughable if it weren’t so pathetic: “My judgment was blinded by my frustration with the ongoing efforts—often anonymous, well-funded, and coordinated—to attack climate science and scientists and prevent this debate, and by the lack of transparency of the organizations involved.”
Let’s take these in order. Anony-mous? True, Heartland’s board documents reveal seven-figure contributions for their climate work from one “anonymous donor,” but environmental organizations take in many multiples of Heartland’s total budget in anonymous donations washed through the left-wing Tides Foundation. The Environmental Defense Fund thanks 141 anonymous donors in one recent report. “Well-funded”? Heartland’s total budget for all its issues, which include health care, education, and technology policy, is around $4.4 million, an amount that would disappear into a single line item in the budget for the Natural Resources Defense Council ($99 million in revenues in 2010). Last year, the Wall Street Journal reports, the World Wildlife Fund spent $68.5 million just on “public education.”
The dog that didn’t bark for the climateers in this story is the great disappointment that Heartland receives only a tiny amount of funding from fossil fuel sources—and none from ExxonMobil, still the bête noire of the climateers. Meanwhile, it was revealed this week that natural gas mogul T. Boone Pickens had given $453,000 to the left-wing Center for American Progress for its “clean energy” projects, and Chesapeake Energy gave the Sierra Club over $25 million (anonymously until it leaked out) for the Club’s anti-coal ad campaign. Turns out the greens take in much more money from fossil fuel interests than the skeptics do.
Finally, “coordinated”? Few public policy efforts have ever had the massive institutional and financial coordination that the climate change cause enjoys. That tiny Heartland, with but a single annual conference and a few phone-book-sized reports summarizing the skeptical case, can derange the climate campaign so thoroughly is an indicator of the weakness and thorough politicization of climate alarmism.
The Gleick episode exposes again a movement that disdains arguing with its critics, choosing demonization over persuasion and debate. A confident movement would face and crush its critics if its case were unassailable, as it claims. The climate change fight doesn’t even rise to the level of David and Goliath. Heartland is more like a David fighting a hundred Goliaths. Yet the serial ineptitude of the climate campaign shows that a tiny David doesn’t need to throw a rock against a Goliath who swings his mighty club and only hits himself square in the forehead.
Steven F. Hayward is the F. K. Weyerhaeuser fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author, most recently, of The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Presidents: From Wilson to Obama (Regnery).
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Feb 25, 2012 - 01:09pm PT
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Booky
Please don't just cut and paste huge long articles here
Just the link
and then tell us what you think in your own words
Please
Look in the mirror, Johnson...
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Ashcroft
Trad climber
SLC, UT
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Feb 25, 2012 - 01:39pm PT
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Bookworm,
Aftergood’s argument (and by implication yours, since you reposted it) is incoherent. Meaning you can’t have it both ways. You can’t simultaneously claim that efforts to minimize climate change are “forlorn and desperate,” and that they are like “100 Goliaths” against one little David. Which is it? Similarly, you can’t simultaneously imply that the scientific consensus is tottering on the brink of collapse, and that skeptics are “isolated and relentlessly assailed.” Which is it? Bring me a coherent position, and then we’ll talk.
-Peter
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corniss chopper
climber
breaking the speed of gravity
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Feb 25, 2012 - 01:43pm PT
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All you Chicken Little's yelling that we're 'ALL GONNA DIE' because of
Global warming have been so exposed as dangerous idiots again and again
that no one takes you seriously.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Feb 25, 2012 - 01:49pm PT
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Similarly, you can’t simultaneously imply that the scientific consensus is tottering on the brink of collapse, and that skeptics are “isolated and relentlessly assailed.” Which is it? Bring me a coherent position, and then we’ll talk.
I think he's implying that the "consensus" is losing its credibility despite peoples' effort to continually assert this consensus demostrates some kind of fact, or a viable theory.
And yes, anyone who defies the "consensus" is labeled something akin to a flat-Earther.
Science is indeed at work on this topic, from both angles. Let's let it play out. I think it will do so sooner, rather than later.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Feb 25, 2012 - 02:58pm PT
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the "consensus" is losing its credibility
The "consensus" refers to scientists, and it's lost no ground there. If anything, scientific agreement that anthropogenic climate change is happening now has strengthened in recent years.
That's pretty obvious if you read the journals, go to the meetings, talk with active scientists, or stay active yourself in any climate-related field. If you rely on non-science and political sources for what you "know" about science, on the other hand, you can get spun in whatever direction you want.
Staying with scientists for a sec ... one example that arrived today: the current issue of EOS (American Geophysical Union) leads off with a report by Howat and others on "Rift in Antarctic glacier."
It happened again, but this time it was caught in the act. During the last week of September 2011 a large transverse rift developed across the floating terminus of West Antarctica's Pine Island Glacier, less than 5 years after its last large calving event, in 2007 (Figure 1). Pine Island Glacier's retreat has accelerated substantially in the past 2 decades, and it is now losing 50 gigatons of ice per year, or roughly 25% of Antarctica's total annual contribution to sea level rise [Rignot et al., 2008]. The glacier's recent accelerated retreat is likely triggered by ocean warming and increased submarine melting. As such, it is of significant interest to glaciologists and of heightened societal relevance.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2012/2012EO080001.shtml
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Feb 25, 2012 - 03:46pm PT
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Here's another note (this one by C Schultz) from the current issue of EOS. Different discipline, different continent, different focus, same concern about climate change. If you stay clean of the science, it's easy to have no clue about how broad-based the research has become.
Nitrous oxide emissions have been the leading area of concern for scientists investigating the role of streams and rivers in global climate change for the past decade. Nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas, is produced in riverbed sediments through nitrification and denitrification. Efforts to understand the rate at which nitrous oxide diffuses through the water to the atmosphere have dominated the field, yet diffusion is not the only relevant mechanism, nor is nitrous oxide the only relevant gas. Observations by Baulch et al. suggest that the global warming potential of methane gas, which they measured bubbling up from several riverbeds, exceeded that of nitrous oxide.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2012/2012EO080008.shtml
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Feb 25, 2012 - 04:13pm PT
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Book worm.... so what do your kids think? No doubt you discuss it with them?
This isn't only silly, but is a default position of people who have no other argument. The children!!!! Typical leftist bullsh#t.
Chiloe, I respect ya, bra, but I staying in my 'natural cyclical change' boat. I still think the sun has a much more profound effect. Sure, we may be able to have a slight impact on Earthly climate, but this green movement and changing lightbulbs is BS IMO.
Why aren't people hounding India and China? They emit more unregulated Co2 than anybody else?
This whole thing is either a scam, or a US shakedown.
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
mammoth lakes ca
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Feb 25, 2012 - 04:21pm PT
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The climate change deniers on this post are parroting propaganda scripted by the mega-oil industry and are merely dupes of the whacked out lunatic fringe republican party who answer to big oil....Please explain how preventing global warming is harmful to mankind...? RJ
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corniss chopper
climber
breaking the speed of gravity
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Feb 25, 2012 - 04:30pm PT
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I'll trust the oil industries thank you. Their products has enabled mankind
to build a global civilization.
The doomsday alarmists are just trying to extort money in the same way gangsters shake down shop owners -"Hey you wouldn't want anything bad to happen pal. So fork over the cash and you'll be alright."
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