Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #680
1 hour ago
Saturday, February 18, 2012
Kochs get death threats too | JunkScience.com
It's not just global warming whiners Michael Mann and Katharine Hayhoe.
What is The Real Scandal?
http://www.Real-Science.com/real-scandal
The scandal has nothing to do with HI funding skeptics.
It has to do with warmists engaging in felony fraud, forgery, libel and defamation of character. Any journalist who hasn't figured that out yet is clearly in a weakened mental state. They should be running away from this as fast as they can.
Warmist Schwarzenegger misinforming Indians about U.S. energy imports
It is of course possible that some of Pachauri´s most ecstatic followers in California were "kind of inhaling".
Things Not To Say
Don't say this to the police :
Sorry officer, I was bending over to get my gun, when my crack pipe got lodged under the gas pedal
Don't say this to the IRS :
I only forged one document out of eight – the one with our revenue on it. But it represents what I was expecting to find, before I stole the other information from our competitor
Mark Landsbaum: Global-warming skeptics gaining upper hand The Orange County Register
But Vahrenholt became skeptical when reviewing an IPCC document on renewable energy and reportedly found hundreds of errors. IPCC officials brushed aside his inquiries, leading Vahrenholt to wonder, "Is this the way they approached the climate assessment reports?" Turns out, it was.
Climate Science Book Club: Can Knowledge Cure Denialism? - Forbes
the science is rock-solid, accessible, and easy to understand. In fact, the scientists carrying out the research are more transparent than any of the groups attacking them
Iowa State researchers: Information flow can help farmers cope with climate change
"This whole climate change debate has gotten to be monotonous," Fales said. "Many of us are saying it's time to forget about the naysayers and go into action, which will require adaptation and resilience."
Foreign aid cash spent tackling climate change - Telegraph
Nearly £1.5 billion has been spent tackling man-made climate change by Government department responsible for fighting poverty abroad, it can be revealed.
German NDR Public Television Sends Message To Vahrenholt And Skeptics: “You Belong In The Sewer!”
Germany's media is sick and intolerant at times, seemingly continuing a once infamous tradition.
Jamaica Lost 1,400 Million because of Climate Change
Most of the problems were caused by storms and hurricanes, including Ivan in 2004, Dean in 2007 and the Tropical Storm Gustav in 2008, said the official at a press conference in which he announced several projects to face the new conditions.
Big Oil Funding The Global Warming Scam With Big Dollars
Heartland got $25,000 from Koch, while Stanford got almost 10,000 times as much from big oil.
“Basically, it reads like it was written from the secret villain lair in a Batman comic. By an intern.”
First, the Climategate emails were real, all too real. Heartland's wee cache of documents included one ham-handed, too goofy-for-words, fake. The Atlantic's Megan McArdle, a self-admitted really big fan of climatology's star figures and no lover of Heartland, analyzed the "2012 Heartland Climate Strategy" document and concluded that "Basically, it reads like it was written from the secret villain lair in a Batman comic. By an intern."
She added, "It's more like [whomever faked the document] sat down at the computer and said, 'What would I write IF I WERE AS CRAZY AS AGW SKEPTICS?'" She characterized other sections of that work of creative fiction as "sheer lunacy."
Heartlandgate Versus Climategate
Whether or not DeSmogBlog knew the document was fake, they are the ones taking the heat for releasing it to the world as a peek into the supposed dark heart of the Heartland Institute. Theft and fakery have become the story. Heartland is raising money from the event, and still no-one is impressed with the relatively small amounts of cash that were supposed to be the 'gotcha' against Heartland.
Fakegate Fallout « The Daily Bayonet
Whether or not DeSmogBlog knew the document was fake, they are the ones taking the heat for releasing it to the world as a peek into the supposed dark heart of the Heartland Institute. Theft and fakery have become the story. Heartland is raising money from the event, and still no-one is impressed with the relatively small amounts of cash that were supposed to be the 'gotcha' against Heartland.
1936 Glacial Melt Revealed Dead Soldiers | Real Science
FAIRBANKS - Temperatures were below normal in January for all of the nine stations discussed in this summary. Negative deviations were especially large in the Interior and western Alaska. These negative deviations, in declining order, occurred for King Salmon (minus 22.9 degrees Fahrenheit), Nome (minus 21.8 degrees), Big Delta (minus 20.4 degrees), Fairbanks (minus 19 degrees) Anchorage (minus 14.6 degrees), Kodiak (minus 9.1 degrees) and Barrow (minus 7.2 degrees).
Fake skeptics of climate change won't be swayed by good science
Genuine skeptics would poring over the documents, following the money, connecting the dots, analyzing what it meant and reaching conclusions about the relative merits of spin and the science it seeks to discredit.
Call to reveal ALL funding behind climate sceptics - Nell Crowden - Members - Climate Health Council
We only have a few years to drastically reduce our greenhouse gas emissions to avert dangerous climate change. Given
the disproportionate influence given to climate sceptics by the media, it is in the public, national, and global interest for all
funding behind their activities to be revealed. This will help people to make up their own minds about the truth of the climate
change threat, so that action can be planned on the basis of evidence rather than confusion.Signed by:
Professor Chris Rapley CBE, Professor of Climate Science,
University College LondonDr. Jim Hansen, Climatologist, Columbia
University...
Waiting For The Storm Troopers | Real Science
Fakegate almost certainly involved several felony crimes, including fraud and forgery. Look for Obama to do nothing.
Climate Lessons: Innoculation against the CO2-Scare Virus in Schools: try humour if you can
I look forward to the day when more and more citizens wake up to the foolishness, and cruelty, of scaring children about CO2, and start asking why.
Extreme Rainfall : The Next Refuge Of The Climate Scoundrels | Real Science
Katherine Hayhoe started the “extreme rainfall” nonsense, which supersedes the catastrophic warming nonsense. It is just as nonsensical.
Guardian : “Rebuild This Wall” | Real Science
It is called debate. That is what we do in non-Communist societies outside of Guardian HQ.
In other words – climate fraudsters stole a company officer’s identity to defraud the company into releasing documents, and when they didn’t find anything of interest – they forged documents and released them to the press.
Sounds like 15-30 in Leavenworth.
Republicans for Environmental Protection: The last people on Earth who still allegedly believe that the FakeGate document wasn't fake?
Republicans for Environmental Protection re: Heartland | Planet3.0
The Heartland documents detail plans to prevent earnest scientific research and opinions other than their own from gaining public exposure. They even go so far as to gin up a science curriculum designed to “dissuade” public schoolteachers from teaching science—a shocking plan to undermine education and turn our public schools into mouthpieces for agenda-driven propaganda.
...If any of the released Heartland documents are not authentic, Heartland should be able and willing to provide solid proof. If, as the evidence seems to indicate, the documents are real, the media has an obligation to report on the plans they describe and their troubling implications for a democratic society.
Will it end in a Big bang of fizzle ..o…u……. | ScottishSceptic
So, it seems that the only way politicians can come out of this with their heads held high … is to find a scapegoat, and it needs to be a pretty big, pretty ugly scape goat to take the blame for such a massive .
In other words, I think we are talking a major corruption trial with dozens of people serving 10s of years. I think we are talking hundred of police sifting through every last email and 100s of millions putting a case together that ensures some people get the public blame … allowing the politicians to change the law without themselves taken the blame.
iowahawk: A Fistful of Rebates
And, what’s true about Detroit is true about all of us. This country can’t be knocked out with one punch. We get back up, slip again, and send the video to our personal injury lawyer. And when we do - the world is going to hear the roar of our engines.
Well, maybe not 'roar.' What sound does a solar electric engine make? Zweep or something, I guess. Anyway, they'll hear something like that.
And if Emperor Toyota thinks he can underestimate us again, like back in '41 - well, Make My Day, Punkazuki. A new Enola Gay is headed your way, and Captain Obama and his fightin' boys from the UAW are ready to drop a hybrid electric PT Cruiser to blow your market share back to the Stone Age.
Yeah, it’s halftime America
US Fish, Wildlife and Plants Climate Adaptation Draft Strategy – Part 1 | Climate Science Watch
s part of our contribution, CSW commented that the document might carry greater relevance for decision-makers who want to advance a needed adaptation agenda to an unconvinced or climate-skeptic audience (a very real possibility) by including more explicit language on the ways in which climate change issues can be framed to appeal to diverse groups – for example, emphasizing the potential damages to people and property to one community, the negative impacts to industry in another.
I Can Haz Energy | [Obama's planet-healing subsidies to the 1%]
Heartland: headbangers flogging a dead horse | Australian Climate Madness
Who in the realist camp would refer to themselves as "anti-climate"? It's as meaningless as saying someone is "anti-weather" or "anti-seasons", and just as ridiculous. And who would say they would "discourage teachers from teaching science"? Only a dimwitted headbanger would include something so blatantly false in a faked document.
The genius of Fenbeagle: Dan Daringpole – Pilot of the Future – Telegraph Blogs
As I already said, this stuff should be mandatory reading in all science schools.
The Reference Frame: America's 19 most charitable corporations
Those extra eight dollars have managed to skew the whole debate in favor of the deniers. Those eight dollars are the true reason why most Americans realize that Michael Mann and Al Gore are fraudsters, despite the investment of $60 billion addressed to those who skillfully pretend to realize that the Armageddon is behind the corner and it always will be.
The American nation has been bribed by those eight dollars to believe the deniers, Think Progress tells us. Cute. ;-)
How the mighty have fallen | ScottishSceptic
But for those who accepted the word of the warmists … who accepted this as a struggle of good against evil … the poor underdog ecos against the Goliath BIG-OIL … it changes everything.
BIG-OIL funds wind. That is a fact. It does not fund the sceptics. That is a fact. That is a fact that completely undermines the moral authority of the warmists to treat every sceptic and everything a sceptic says as the evil lies of BIG oil.
Friday, February 17, 2012
Richard Littlemore | Climategate victims chide Heartland double standard
In the case at hand, (and as Heartland explains in its own press release) an anonymous "Heartland Insider" asked the Institute to mail the entire briefing package for its January board meeting - and Heartland complied. Having received that package, the DeSmogBlog checked the content against research we had in hand to confirm its authenticity. Then we published it - in its entirety, so there could be no doubt about the context - on our website on Valentines's Day.
Twitter / @TheBradBlog: Had the "joy" of debating ...
Had the "joy" of debating Global Warming Denier disinformation chief Marc Morano/@ClimateDepot last night. Will have to post audio soon.
The Arctic voyages of William Scoresby « Tallbloke's Talkshop
In the summer of 1806, he found himself facing a strange occurrence. The preceding winter had been unusually dry and warm. So had the spring. As a result the Greenland ice pack, which stands like a silent guardian, impeding all northern progress and preventing passage up both sides of Greenland, receded north instead of advancing across the open waters as it usually did.
Suddenly Scoresby found himself facing open water.
Bob Carter wins the cartoon war :-) A very sweet win. « JoNova: Science, carbon, climate and tax
Thank you DeSmog! Without FakeGate we would not have had this:
Executive Director of Greenpeace International on the alleged danger of trace amounts of CO2: "The research is crystal clear, mother earth is screaming at us"
The European: You have expressed your dissatisfaction with the idea of global governance. Are you happy with the results at the Durban climate conference?
Naidoo: We either accept the scientific research or we don’t accept it. The research is crystal clear, mother earth is screaming at us. The facts are there for anyone who can read, climate-related disasters are on the rise. Here’s the scary part: When we compare scientific predictions with observations on the ground, we can see that we are approaching a tipping point.
Still crazy after all these years: New York Times editorial claims that CO2 is "the most dangerous greenhouse gas"
A Second Front in the Climate War - NYTimes.com
Governments everywhere should obviously be pushing to reduce carbon dioxide, the most dangerous greenhouse gas. In the meantime, opening an important second front in the climate war will demonstrate that progress is possible.
Europe's Cap-and-Trade Lesson for California - On Energy (usnews.com)
Maybe, with the impending failure of the plan that inspired their own model now staring them directly in the face from across the Atlantic, Californians will finally take a moment to reconsider. If their true goal is, in fact, to save the environment, they have little choice.
Clmategate vs. deniergate, fake-gate or sucker-gate | ScottishSceptic
The following is a comparison of the climategate and Heartland document release. I chose to compare them using the criteria provided by the PCC. As far as I can see this is a pretty well open and shut case. The publication of information stolen from the Heartland Institute is against PCC code of conduct because there is no public interest and it breaks numerous sections whereas the release of climategate emails was fully justified by public interest.
What if they are wrong? | Climate Etc.
Suppose it turns out that CO2 has essentially nothing to do with the earth’s climate. How will the history of this colossal mistake be written?
Al Fin: FakeGate: Peter Gleick Associated w/ Fake Memo?
It is interesting how quickly the speculation over the authorship of the fake memo has overshadowed the intended effect of the memo dump. The only controversial memo in the bunch was the faked one. The rest of the material is so humdrum, it probably drove the data thief to forgery! ;-)
Warmists lie because the facts don’t suit them | Herald Sun Andrew Bolt Blog
why such fakery is needed seems to me clear.
People lie only when the truth does not suit them.
Huffington Post quotes a philosophy professor who claims that Heartland "is a real threat to democracy"
Why Global Warming Still Considered Target Of Skepticism For Americans
Scott Brophy, a philosophy professor at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, agreed that politicians are "out of touch" with the thinking of their constituents. Yet the problem remains, he said, that "1 in every 3 or 4 Americans don't believe in a basic fact."
For democracy to work, according to Brophy, we need to understand how and why people don't trust the scientific facts.
Research has shown that people are motivated to find information that supports their beliefs. "Encountering counterarguments causes us to marshal forces like an army of white blood cells to defend against them," said Brophy.
He pointed to the influence of massive disinformation campaigns such as the recently outed Heartland Institute. "This is a real threat to democracy," he told HuffPost.
Gavin Schmidt of RealClimate on the Promise and Pitfalls of Blogging - YouTube
[22 minute video] Gavin Schmidt, a veteran climate researcher for NASA, was a founder of the RealClimate.org in 2004. Here he talks with Pace University environmental science students and their professor, Andy Revkin, about the opportunity for scientists in many fields to help fill the online space "between the paper and the tweet."
I’ll believe the sincerity of the Open Letter to the Heartland Institute when, say,
- Mann’s twitter account will display a little less bile and won’t say incredibly stupid stuff like “[Climategate] was a crime against humanity. It’s a crime against the planet“
- Schmidt will allow discussion on RealClimate, instead of focusing on “simply deleting all of the attempts to draw attention to [whatever he dislikes to talk about]“
- Overpeck will come clean on the trouble of normalizing proxy reconstruction in a misleading way for policy makers...
Heartland Institute: The ‘Gate’ Scandal That Never Was : Stop The ACLU
Truth, though, is not on the menu for the left-wing journalists that are so happy to see an email gate that they can use against those that know that global warming is neither man-made and that there isn’t anything we mere humans can do about the weather.
Look for this story to perhaps grow with more left-wingers attempting to use it as a weapon in the global warmist’s arsenal of falsities.
In other words, all evidence so far supports Heartland’s emphatic assertion that the document is a forgery.
Interestingly, Gleick, who would normally be preening and prancing in glee at this sort of attention to the Heartland
Institute has so far been utterly silent at his Forbes blog and on his Twitter feed.One has to wonder if Peter Gleick or an alarmist fellow traveler he knows is concerned about an FBI agent knocking on the door
sometime soon. Perhaps people should keep an eye on the dumpsters around Gleick’s house for discarded computers or an Epson
scanner.
DeSmog Blog’s Bogus Exposé of the Heartland Institute
There is no analogy between climategate and the theft of the Heartland documents because (1) Heartland has no legal obligation to share its internal deliberations with the public, and (2), unlike collusion to evade FOIA, strategizing about fund raising is not a crime!
Unsettling Science on the Himalayan Glaciers | Via Meadia
Astoundingly, the scientists don’t seem to have realized the significance of their own findings.
Bjørn Lomborg: Germany’s Sunshine Daydream
One of the world’s biggest green-energy public-policy experiments is coming to a bitter end in Germany, with important lessons for policymakers elsewhere.
Lord Lawson Offers ‘Fuel Poverty’ Advice To Peers
Fuel poverty could be reduced “at a stroke” if the government scrapped certain coalition measures designed to support renewable energy, a former Conservative chancellor has suggested.
Hmm: Which one of these 501c(3) organizations is not like the other?
Heartland Institute faces fresh scrutiny over tax status | Environment | guardian.co.uk
John Mashey, a retired computer scientist and Silicon Valley executive, said he filed a complaint to the IRS this week that said Heartland's public relations and lobbying efforts violated its non-profit status.The Climate Project - Info | Facebook
Mashey said he sent off his audit, the product of three months' research, just a few hours before the unauthorised release of the Heartland documents.
..."I believe there was a massive abuse of 501c(3)," Mashey said. "My extensive study of these think anks showed numerous specific actions that violated the rules – such as that their work is supposed to be factually based. Such as there was a whole lot of behaviour that sure looked like lobbying and sending money to foreign organisations that are not charities."
About Greenpeace Fund | GreenpeaceThe Climate Project is Al Gore's climate change leadership program and is a part of the Alliance for Climate Protection, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.
Greenpeace Fund, Inc. is registered with the Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) charitable entityMake a Monthly Donation | World Wildlife Fund
World Wildlife Fund is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization.NRDC: NRDC Action Fund
NRDC operates under section 501(c)(3) of the tax codeContact Us - Gift Planning - Sierra Club
The Sierra Club Foundation (currently located at 85 Second Street, Suite 750, San Francisco, California, 94105) is a "public foundation," incorporated in the State of California and classified as tax-exempt under Internal Revenue Code 501(c)(3).Charity Disclosure
The Pew Charitable Trusts is a non-profit, 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization
Kevin Knobloch, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists, noted in a blog post today that while Heartland is demanding integrity and fairness in the treatment of this theft, the group was silent and in fact actively exploited the theft of these scientists’ emails in an effort to discredit their climate change research.
He went on to note that the “far more disturbing story here” was Heartland’s efforts to corrupt the teaching of science at its earliest levels by targeting public schools with materials designed to marginalize or dismiss climate science.
“The deep anger that pervades Heartland’s public statement yesterday seems to indicate embarrassment at being caught doing something that isn’t honorable, of which they are not proud,” Knobloch wrote.
The full letter from scientists, which was published in the London Guardian earlier today, is reproduced below...
[It's signed by this "Who's Who" list of climate hoax scientists] ...Ray Bradley, PhD, Director of the Climate System Research Center, University of Massachusetts
David Karoly, PhD, ARC Federation Fellow and Professor, University of Melbourne, Australia
Michael Mann, PhD, Director, Earth System Science Center, Pennsylvania State University
Jonathan Overpeck, PhD, Professor of Geosciences and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Arizona
Ben Santer, PhD, Research Scientist, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Gavin Schmidt, PhD, Climate Scientist, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies
Kevin Trenberth, ScD, Distinguished Senior Scientist, Climate Analysis Section, National Center for Atmospheric Research
Twitter / @suzyji: You are going to see scien ...
You are going to see scientific community fighting back against assault on science - @michaelemann gu.com/p/35h6t/tw #heartland
Heartland Memo Looking Faker By the Minute - Megan McArdle - National - The Atlantic
I have a strong suspicion that [the FakeGate document creator(s)] refrained from commenting on the document dump. That's what I'd do, anyway. A commenter or email correspondent who suddenly disappeared when they normally would have been reveling in this sort of story is a good candidate.
Did anyone else notice that Peter Gleick suddenly disappeared when he normally would have been reveling in this sort of story?
Pennsylvania, U.S.A. –The Year of the Dragon has gotten off to an inauspicious start for the Chinese wind industry and in particular, Sinovel Wind Group Co. (Sinovel), China's leading wind turbine manufacturer.
In early February, with the official end to the “Spring Festival” only days away, Sinovel reported decidedly chilly preliminary estimates of its FY2011 performance, confirming that Sinovel and indeed the whole Chinese wind industry had, in the words of one Chinese wind industry insider “entered a winter that would be hard to endure”.
Heartland Institute Rebuts Outlandish New York Times Story on Stolen and Fake Documents
It’s astounding that this would appear in a “news” story. We are not “attacking climate science,” we are defending it from advocates of an unrelated social and economic agenda. The Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate change (NIPCC) does not “host lavish annual conferences.” I’m not sure it has ever held a conference. Heartland, though, has hosted 6 international conferences. And the only organization that calls these conferences “Denialpalooza” is DeSmogBlog, which is not an environmental group but a for-profit PR firm created to attack conservatives and libertarians.
Big Oil Money for Me, But Not for Thee « NoFrakkingConsensus
The Sierra Club takes fossil fuel money. So does the Nature Conservancy, Conservation International, and Rajendra Pachauri’s sustainability conference. So why is the Heartland Institute being torn to pieces for the same behaviour?
The Blackboard » Roger Jr. Presses Gleick
I emailed @PeterGleick to ask if he faked the Heartland document, no reply yet. I offered to publish his confirmation or denial on my blog.
The Blackboard » Tell me what’s horrible about this.
lets speculate as mann did about mcintyre in his book
...I will tell you the minute I read his name in this document I went..
THAT doesnt fit. What is Gleick doing in a heartland memo. nobody takes him seriously...
Anyway, whoever wrote that paragraph had mistaken views about how skeptics think and about the stature of Gleick. They also used weird rare words and a weird style of writing.
Now, can you find others who used that word? yes, of course.
did they have access to a 990? were they in a fight with heartland?
Can you find others who uses parenthesis weirdly? yes. Is it a consistent pattern in all their prose? not that I have seen.
motive, opportunity.
all speculation of course. But consider this. desmogblog spent an hour vetting these documents before publishing them as real.
I spent more than an hour researching this before pointing out a few things and drawing no definitive conclusion. Can we conclude it was Gleick? no. But the standard was set by Mann, we can speculate about Mcintyre playing a role in the hack and nobody complains. So, too in this case we can speculate about Gleick. I havent seen any evidence that indicates it wasn’t him.
Look, we have an explanation that explains the weird things we find in the memo. Kinda like a GCM that explains the warming only when you include anthro forcing. See, simple.
The original version of the article said this:
The institute hasn't yet confirmed the documents are genuine - but equally, it hasn't said they're not, and it's had long enough (more than 12 hours, at the time of writing) to take a look.
Brand-new realist blog for your RSS reader: Mr. Worthing
Mr. Worthing: ClimateShift Project
I stumbled upon this report as I browsed the web. I hadn't seen it before, but it highlights the disparity in funding between Green groups such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, WWF etc., and the 'conservative' think tanks such as Heartland.
Mr. Worthing: The World’s Most Beautiful Mosque in Malaysia is Vulnerable to Rising Seas
I guess that building it in the sea was your first mistake?
Mr. Worthing: Where's my boat?
Clague is delivering his talk during Causes and Effects of Relative Sea-Level Changes in the Northeast Pacific, a seminar at the 2012 American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) conference. It’s at the Vancouver Convention Centre. Clague’s talk is on Sunday, Feb. 19.
Clague will draw on his and other studies to explain why “no low-lying coastline in the Pacific Northwest will be unaffected by an expected climate-change driven five-metre rise in coastal sea levels globally.”
Oh, and with reference to the always accurate and impartial Wikipedia, this was taken from their DeSmogBlog page on Friday 17th February:
"DeSmogBlog achieved worldwide recognition and acclaim from environmentalists for leaking a number of highly revealing and deeply embarrassing internal documents from the Heartland Institute in February 2012, in what rapidly became known as "Deniergate".
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent federal agency that supports fundamental research and education across all fields of science and engineering. In fiscal year (FY) 2012, its budget is $7.0 billion. NSF funds reach all 50 states through grants to nearly 2,000 colleges, universities and other institutions. Each year, NSF receives over 50,000 competitive requests for funding, and makes about 11,000 new funding awards. NSF also awards nearly $420 million in professional and service contracts yearly.
Perhaps you fancy a bit of climate change education? $30 million awarded over the past 3 years.
Arctic Ocean To Close, Polar Bears Doomed | The Resilient Earth
While this claim has been made by others, stating that a new glacial onset is impossible without a significant reduction in atmospheric CO2 concentrations is far from proven. The ability of the Earth system to compensate and recover from sharp increases in atmospheric greenhouse gases had been observed many times in the prehistoric past and it is accepted that glaciation has started when CO2 levels were at or above current levels. Just the same, if driving an SUV is keeping the glaciers at bay I say keep on truckin'.
Wolves besiege Armenian villages - Can't find food due to deep snow
Due to cold weather and snowfall up to 10 feet (3 meters) deep, wolves cannot find food in the mountains.
Wind farm fanatics are bankrupting us with their hot air
THIS week the chairman of the National Trust finally admitted what the rest of us have known for some time: wind farms are the ugliest, most stupid, environmentally damaging, expensive, wasteful and utterly pointless monstrosities ever to deface the British landscape
Science, Sustainability and the Arts at #AAASmtg
Neat session recognizing that the big questions in sustaining home planet relate to values as much as data [I wonder how many of the attendees cared enough about sustainability to try traveling to Vancouver without using fossll fuels]
Harvard German Conference: Germany Attempting To Hock Its Catastrophic Energy Strategy To The USA
ho cares about these nuances – it’s the way the USA should go, these misguided pointy heads will tell us.
AAAS – “science is not enough” | Watts Up With That?
WUWT readers may be interested to see what the AAAS is doing with members’ funding. I’m amused that they baldly admit that they want to “influence public perceptions and debate when the science supporting a position is not enough to carry the argument.”
Climate Change Increases Mate-Swapping in Birds: Scientific American
Birds' long history of infidelity is being exacerbated by global warming
Flashback: Al Gore behaved like 'crazed sex poodle' with masseuse - Telegraph
A masseuse has accused Al Gore, the former US vice president, of sexually assaulting her at an Oregon hotel during a global warming lecture tour in
2006.
GARRISON, N.Y. — A growing number of scholars has been arguing that the greatest impediment to action on climate change is not Big Oil, the Tea Party, libertarian/conservative think tanks, or climate skeptics. Rather, they say, it is the human brain.
Simply put, the argument goes, evolution has hardwired us to respond to immediate dangers (think tigers and bears), not slow-moving, hard to grasp threats like melting glaciers and rising sea levels.
The IPCC & Climategate scientist Kenneth Trenberth long predicted that anthropogenic global warming would increase tropical cyclone landfalls - their prediction was wrong
Japan: Children won't know what the first six stories of buildings look like
Japan - Snowdrifts up to 48 feet (15 meters) - "The height of a 6 storey building"
Huge snowdrifts have formed in places, especially in the center of the island of Hokkaido. Some reach almost 15 meters (48.75 ft) high, “equivalent to the height of a 6 storey building.”
Heartland on FakeGate: “When we find out who did this – and we will find out – they will absolutely need a lawyer”
Global Warming Lefties Commit Identity Theft to Target Conservative Think Tank - Big Journalism
The way they got the information was blatantly illegal. Somebody on the left side of the aisle registered an email address with the name of someone on Heartland’s Board of Directors, and then emailed a member of the administrative staff at the Institute asking that information be sent. The administrator complied, whereupon the fraudulent email account was deleted, and the information was blasted out to enemies of the Institute.
I spoke with Heartland’s Director of Communications, Jim Lakely, today. Lakely informed me that the supposed “confidential memo” laying out the “Heartland Climate Strategy” was created out of whole cloth – it was not created by anyone at The Heartland Institute, or anyone associated with them. It specifically cites the Koch brothers, for example, as a way to try to discredit the agenda of the Institute.
“When we find out who did this – and we will find out – they will absolutely need a lawyer,” Lakely said. “This act of deception and fraud exposes, again, the hatred those on the left have for anyone with a different point of view. They aren’t interested in open debate, which Heartland has always welcomed. They want to destroy their opponents – and will steal and lie to achieve that end with not the slightest moral pang.
“But it’s not going to work – not on The Heartland Institute,” Lakely said. “We’ve just begun to fight back. And those who committed and perpetuated this malicious act are going to soon realize they’ve make a very big mistake.”
How Climate Modellers Create A Little Ice Age
Here we go again. Regular readers will remember that a couple of weeks ago Christopher Columbus was being blamed for the Little Ice Age (AD 1300 to 1850). Now, a new computer “study” announced that volcanoes caused the Little Ice Age. A research team led by Gifford Miller of the University of Colorado says eruptions of four volcanoes just before AD 1300 spewed huge amounts of sulphates into the air, which cooled the Arctic and “grew” the Arctic ice sheets and glaciers.Svensmark Hits Back At Scienceblog’s Florian Freistetter Over Vahrenholt Book
I find a few problems with this “news,” starting with the reality that the Little Ice Age lasted about 550 years! How do volcanic eruptions—even from four very big volcanoes—throw up enough space dust to cool the planet for five centuries!? Two years, certainly, perhaps even ten years for an awesome eruption such as Krakatoa in 1883—but not 500. Climate historian Hubert Lamb notes that “in 1783, when there were two very great eruptions—in Iceland and in Japan—in the same year, the combined effect may have been a cooling of the northern hemisphere by 1.3 degrees C, gradually tailing away to zero over the following four or five years.”
My second problem is that Dr Miller doesn’t know which volcanoes erupted!
The hypothesis that cosmic rays strongly affect the climate offers a serious challenge to the more fashionable hypothesis that man-made greenhouse gases have been the main cause of climate changes. So it does not surprise me that many people try to falsify it. In fact it’s quite flattering that they go to so much trouble, when one good outcome (for them) should be enough, and in my opinion no such paper has been produced so far.How AAAS Scientists View the Public, the Media, and the Political Process | Age of Engagement | Big Think
ideology also likely influences how scientists selectively attend to, interpret and frame science-related political trends and controversies.ABC News Watch: Missing News: Memory Hole and Climategate two
ABC entirely missed one of the major stories of 2011.
Children won't know what the Dutch royal family looks like
Dutch royal buried by avalanche - News - Virgin Media
A member of the Dutch royal family has been taken to hospital after being buried in an avalanche in an Austrian ski resort, reports say.
...Members of the royal family are skiing in the Austrian mountain village of Lech, which has been hit by heavy snowfall in recent days.
Croatia: Children won't know what an X-ray that doesn't show broken bones looks like
The Guilfordian : Europe braces for more cold weather as Siberian cold front marches south
With hundreds dead, lines of transport cut off and fuel supplies rationed, the whole of Europe is at war — with the weather. Since the end of January, the cold front has claimed over 500 lives in Europe; the Weather Underground rates it as Europe’s coldest outbreak since at least 1991.
...The Croatian city of Split saw a spike in bone fractures in recent days as hundreds of people slipped on icy roads, according to AFP. Struggling to keep up with the injuries, Split’s hospital ran through a two-year supply of plaster for splints and casts in just five days.
Some teachers avoid the subject altogether to avoid controversy, he said. Other teachers are skeptics themselves.
"I believe that 'climate change' education is used to indict Western civilization of false[ly] manufactured crimes," one Ohio middle-school teacher wrote on the National Science Teachers Association survey. "Most of what the general news media and the education establishment insist upon as true science is simply not."
Warmist Ben Cubby gets all worked up about a private non-alarmist organization that spent less than $63,000 in 2009
Web leak shows trail of climate sceptic funding
The Australian Climate Science Coalition, an offshoot of a conservative lobby group called the Australian Environment Foundation, received virtually all its funding from the International Climate Science Coalition, which has been financially supported by Heartland.
In 2010, the Australian group had an income of $50,920, and $46,343 of that came from the American Climate Science Coalition, an offshoot of the International Climate Science Coalition, the ASIC documents show. The amount of public donations received was nil.
In 2009, the US arm kicked in $60,699 in funds - virtually all the Australian organisation's entire budget of $62,910 - the ASIC documents show.
Nina Burleigh of Salon tries to cover up Fakegate
Secret papers turn up heat on global-warming deniers - Salon.com
In the academies, the argument now is only between experts who predict “bad” and those who predict “catastrophe.”...[buried deep in her article] Heartland spokesman Jim Lakely, reached by Salon on Wednesday, declined to comment on whether Heartland engages in lobbying. He insisted that at least one of the leaked documents (the “strategy” paper) is a “fake” and therefore he wouldn’t concede the authenticity of any of the others, although he didn’t deny it either.
Nina Burleigh is a journalist and the author of five books. She is currently working on an ebook single about women and the "Arab Spring" to be published in March 2012 by Byliner.
Her latest book, The Fatal Gift of Beauty, was a New York Times bestseller. In the last several years, she has profiled a wide array of subjects, including American politicians, Israeli archaeological forgers, an Arab feminist, a small-town Italian mayor murdered over slow food politics, asteroid deflection experts and Chinese immigrants to Italy.
Children won't know what mandarin oranges look like
US (CA): Frosts will reduce citrus crop by 15%
The damage will vary from crop to crop as mandarins are more vulnerable to frosts, with damage beginning at 32 degrees, than are navels, which only get damaged when it plummets below 27 degrees. As a result the anticipated drop in the mandarin crop is 35%.
Big Oil Contributed $500 Million To The Global Warming Scam | Real Science
British Petroleum destroyed the Gulf of Mexico, and then gave $500 million to fund junk global warming research.
- Bishop Hill blog - Science Media Centre and the BBC guidelines
I'm struggling with the idea that Richard Black can use quotes delivered by the Science Media Centre without breaching these guidelines. Surely an independent news organisation, particularly one with the resources of the BBC, doesn't need to go to the Science Media Centre to get quotes? Why should the Science Media Centre - which has a political campaigner like Bob Ward on its board - get to decide which scientists' views are suitable for the BBC?
Guardian Happy To Use “Total Fake” Documents As Evidence Of Global Warming | Real Science
Wow! Only one out eight documents was a total fake, and that is good enough for The Guardian.
How many of the tens of thousands of Climategate e-mails were fake? Exactly zero.
Guardian : Faked Heartland Documents Prove That Mann Isn’t Paranoid | Real Science
I confess. My entire budget of $0.00 was made possible by equal donations from Exxon and Heartland and The Sierra Club and WWF and The World Wrestling Foundation.
The inside story on climate scientists under siege | Environment | guardian.co.uk
Aside from the glacier error, the science remained sound. But Mann said now: "There may have been an overdue amount of complacency among many in the scientific community."
...And although there are bad days, he still seems to believe he is on the winning side.Across America, this is the third successive year of weird weather. The US department of agriculture has just revised its plant hardiness map, reflecting warming trends. That is going to reinforce scientists' efforts to cut through the disinformation campaign, Mann said.
Desmogblog Sinks to New Lows Of Fraud | Real Science
They set up a completely fraudulent straw man, and then blamed their own criminal activity it on the toxic nature of climate denial.
DeSmogBlog’s fakegate problem « The Daily Bayonet
Ignoring the comedy typo in a paragraph that says DeSmog is committed to accuracy, Littlemore’s upside-down demand shows how little integrity they have at DeSmogBlog. Brendan DeMille had the documents for only about an hour before he released them to the world. There was no time for fact checking and no attempt to verify the source. It was too good to check and, as a result, the issue they wanted to frame as #deniergate has blown up in their faces and become #fakegate.
If DeSmogBlog wants the world to look at the ‘legitimate issues’ they say are raised by Heartland’s documents, they should withdraw the faked memo until they either prove it is real, or issue an apology for a careless smear job.
Littlemore’s refusal to accept that he and DeSmog were used as useful idiots by whoever obtained the documents and wrote the fake memo is going to make this a long, slow-motion train wreck for DeSmogBlog, and warmists in general. All anyone will remember about this whole sordid affair is that the same people who would defend climate scientists against charges of faking data and making stuff up used those very same tactics to smear skeptics.
Movie industry takes notice of 'Inconsistent Truth' » The Commercial Appeal
Borrowing as much from Michael Moore as from Al Gore, the film presents Valentine as a much more slender and conservative version of Moore -- a wry comic host and onscreen interviewer who stalks the elusive Tennessee Democrat and ex-vice president for comment the way Moore went after General Motors chairman Roger Smith in "Roger and Me" (1989).
What Do the Heartland Documents Show Us? | Real Science
They show us that the global warming community is full of fraudsters, and pushed by journalists with an agenda – and no integrity.
Heartland Institute raising money off 'Denialgate' - Darren Samuelsohn - POLITICO.com
On Thursday, Mother Jones also reported that Bast sent another email to donors stating that the group had reported the identity theft and computer fraud to the police and FBI.
The Australian government is releasing up to 1 billion Australian dollars ($1.08 billion) to reduce pollution and to help manufacturers implement programs that cut costs by lessening energy use.
Climate Warming Denial: Big Business : Discovery News
What has particularly intrigued and interested a number of bloggers and journalists is an item in the budget that outlines a $100,000-per-year "global warming curriculum" for schoolchildren.
The CLIMATE SCEPTICS Blog: Steve Goreham speaks at BSU about climate change.
Q&A with National Center for Science Education on climate change, skeptics | NJ.com
Q. Membership in the pro-creationism camp is clear. But who’s leading the climate change deniers?
A. There are some organizations, such as the Heartland Institute, who, in years past, have promoted alternate climate change education materials. There was a DVD called “Unstoppable Solar Cycles” that was very well produced and convincing to people who don’t know better.
Twitter / @BBCRBlack: Turning vegetarian en mass ...
Turning vegetarian en masse would save UK equal to half vehicle emissions, study concludes bit.ly/wBkBLC
Canada News: Scientists sound alarm over climate-change skepticism - thestar.com
Federoff, head of an organization representing 10 million people around the world, said the climate-change denial forces within the Republican Party are particularly troubling.
“We clutch our heads and say how can this be in 21st-century U.S. — the most scientifically sophisticated in the world — that we have a whole denial phenomenon in politics? It’s just really odd,” she said.
...University of Victoria climatologist Andrew Weaver said scientists can’t be blamed for not doing a better job of communicating their findings.
“One one hand there are a bunch of disconnected individuals publishing science,” he said. “And on the other hand there is a very coordinated effort from so-called not-for-profits and public relations firms trying effectively to undermine the science.”
Countries Seek Retaliation to Europe’s Carbon Tax on Airlines - NYTimes.com
BRUSSELS — China, the United States and two dozen other countries are looking at coordinated retaliation — including measures to squeeze European airlines and other industries — if Europe tries to enforce a new law requiring airlines to pay for their greenhouse gas emissions.
Heartland has put the release of the confidential documents which it calls "An Online Mugging" at the heart of its new fundraising appeal.
"Leftwing groups commit fraud, release fake strategy memo to attack the Heartland Institute. We're fighting back," the appeal said, directing readers to a page where they are invited to give $5,000 in return for being invited to networking events.
Washington Post on FakeGate: "the forged document doesn’t say anything that’s not included in the other fund-raising documents, which are not currently in dispute."
Leaked docs offer insight into how climate-skeptic groups operate - The Washington Post
First, some important details. At least one of the “strategy” documents (PDF) acquired by DesmogBlog appears to be a forgery — Heartland insists that it is a “total fake” — but the forged document doesn’t say anything that’s not included in the other fund-raising documents, which are not currently in dispute.
Climate-change naysayers drowning out scientific research, expert says
VANCOUVER — The president of one of the world's biggest scientific organizations says the research community is being outgunned by naysayers.
She said she is "scared to death" by trends that show declining public acceptance of global warming and the growing influence of science skeptics, who have plenty of resources to spread their misinformation.
"They are actually being effective," Nina Federoff, president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, said Thursday when asked about reports of a new push to undermine the teaching of global warming in U.S. schools.
Explorer Will Steger regales Hawley students with tales of adventure | WDAY | Fargo, ND
Will Steger – Explorer and Authoer: “Climate change, the science is totally in on it. I've seen the effects, we're starting to see the effects down here, but the most important thing is we're starting to see solutions.”
Steger spoke with dozens of 3rd Graders at Hawley Elementary today, telling stories of his journeys and explaining the impacts of climate change.
Snow decline in Lahaul sparks global warming fears
It is surprising that other areas of Himachal, south of the Rohtang Pass, have received thick snowfall, some after 50-60 years.
Leaked Documents From Climate Denialism Lobbyists Revealed | Care2 Causes
So on the one side there is science, and on the other side, political organizations who simply like to make unfounded statements to discredit climate change
- Bishop Hill blog - Richard Black and the BBC guidelines
The idea that Richard Black adheres in any way to the BBC's editorial guidelines seems completely risible to me. As far as I can see BBC management let him do his own thing, and the BBC Trust don't care one way or the other.
Quote of the week – Andrew Bolt nails “Fakegate” | Watts Up With That?
Meet the man, assistant DeSmogger Brendan De Melle, who took a whole hour to get the documents online from the time received. Speed is more important than fact checking in journo-lism I suppose.
The New Nostradamus of the North: The harsh reality of wind and solar energy
The harsh reality of green energy does not match its spin. Gary Lamphier, writing in the Edmonton Journal, tells us a story that the greenies want to sweep under the rug:
Roger Pielke Jr.'s Blog: Reality is Not Good Enough
If the faked document happened to be produced by a climate activist or scientist (as some are already suggesting), then the leaked Heartland documents will go down in history as one of the more spectacular own goals in the history of the climate debate (with the consequences proportional to the stature of the faker). The faking is likely to overshadow whatever legitimate questions may have been raised by the release of the documents. Imagine what would have happened if the UEA hacker/leaker had made up a few emails to spice up the dossier.
More generally, the episode already illustrates much of what has become of the activist wing of the climate science community -- Apparently, reality is not good enough, so it must be sexed up. This sort of thing feeds into the worst imaginings of skeptics and blinds them to the fact that there are real issues here despite the frequent over-egging of the pudding.
Un-Scientific American's global warming lesson | Australian Climate Madness
And there the prosecution rests, m’lud. That’s it. Sceptics are dumb and can’t understand the difference between weather and climate, carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and humans are putting more of it into the atmosphere, ergo humans cause climate change. Case closed. See, the science really is settled!
Did Peter Gleick write the FakeGate document?
- Bishop Hill blog - Whodunnit?
There's also some very interesting speculation about the identify of the culprit going on in the comments at Lucia's at the moment. Steven Mosher has noted the west-coast time stamp in the strategy document metadata and also some of the stylistic quirks of the author - poor punctuation, excessive use of parenthesis, and also the use of the strange term "anti-climate". Comparisons are being made with the literary style and twitterings of none other than Peter Gleick, the very green head of the Pacific Institute in Oakland, California.The Blackboard » Tell me what’s horrible about this.
[Steven Mosher comment] Looking at the small corpus of Gleick writings I would say that I see consistencies in misuse that are very telling. He writes himself into positions that he doesnt know how to punctuate. Hence the idiosyncratic use of parenthesis. he does this repeatedly.The Blackboard » Tell me what’s horrible about this.
Again, this is all just speculation. However, he’s been quiet. You’d expect him to tweet something over the last two days.. soo quiet..
[Steven Mosher comment] its not the parenthetical comments, its the STYLE of using themThe Blackboard » Tell me what’s horrible about this.
“Efforts at places such as Forbes are especially important now that they have begun to allow highprofile
climate scientists (such as Gleick) to post warmist science essays that counter our own.”
that (such as) is weird and he does it twice.
The other thing is this. Gleick and taylor have been fighting.
Gleick and Curry, fighting. Now comes this bogus memo that turns gleick into a high profile climate scientist.
Worst of all, haertland doesnt like revkin, and here in this memo they seem to like him.
This paragraph is the smoking gun. But the gun is pointed at the foot of a guy in california. This is just an extension of his fight with taylor.
The Blackboard » Tell me what’s horrible about this.
[Earlier comment by Steven Mosher] I have some speculation on the writer of the document.The Blackboard » Tell me what’s horrible about this.
1. West coast time zone.
2. trashes Curry and revkin, known adversaries
3. Uses a very strange word (anti-climate) in the document and in his tweets
4. uses parenthesis in a very odd way when he doesnt know how to punctuate sentences. in the document and in his letter to Pielke.
5. glorifies himself in the document.
6. prior history of making phony statements
Its not proof of course, just a speculation, kinda like Mann speculating that Steve mcIntyre had something to do with the leak. which nobody objected to.
[earlier comment by Steven Mosher] ...But the thing that hit me first off was the mention of Gleick.
What I thought when I read his name was.. what the hell is his name doing in a strategy document? huh? makes no sense.
Then I thought.. hey arsonists often return to the scene of the crime.. is this his weird way of doing the same thing, metaphorically.. then I read the slam against revikin and curry.
Then I remember that he and curry had an issue… then the west coast time zone thing.
DeSmogBlog defends FakeGate document: "The DeSmogBlog has no evidence supporting Heartland's claim that the Strategic document is fake. A close review of the content shows that it is overwhelmingly accurate"
Richard Littlemore | It’s a bird; it’s a hockey stick; it’s a faked document!
The DeSmogBlog has no evidence supporting Heartland's claim that the Strategic document is fake. A close review of the content shows that it is overwhelmingly accurate...The DeSmogBlog is committed to accuracy.
As of 4:37 am Central time on 2/17/12, I've archived the page above here.
Killian documents controversy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Although CBS and Rather defended the authenticity and usage of the documents for a two-week period, continued scrutiny from other news organizations and independent analysis of the documents obtained by USA Today and CBS raised questions about their validity and led to a public repudiation on September 20, 2004. Rather stated, "if I knew then what I know now – I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question,"[13] and CBS News President Andrew Heyward said, "Based on what we now know, CBS News cannot prove that the documents are authentic, which is the only acceptable journalistic standard to justify using them in the report. We should not have used them. That was a mistake, which we deeply regret."[13][14]
Several months later, a CBS-appointed panel led by Dick Thornburgh and Louis Boccardi criticized both the initial CBS news segment and CBS' "strident defense" during the aftermath.[15] CBS fired producer Mary Mapes, several senior news executives were asked to resign, and CBS apologized to viewers. The panel did not specifically consider whether the documents were forgeries but concluded that the producers had failed to authenticate them and cited "substantial questions regarding the authenticity of the Killian documents."
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Crazed gun owner Todd Tanner tries to simplify things for us: You know what trace amounts of harmless, natural, invisible atmospheric gas are like? A grizzly charging your family!
'If Climate Change Isn’t Real, I’ll Give You My Beretta' | Field & Stream
TT: Let’s say you are walking down a trail in the wilderness with your wife and kids, and you come upon a grizzly sow, standing on a carcass. She charges, flat out. You’re in front of your family. What do you do? Just give up? Pretend it’s not happening? Let her maul you and everything your care about? Of course you don’t. You take action. That is how I see climate change. It’s real, it’s threatening everything we love. Not taking action is not an option.
End-Of-Worlder Michael Müller Foams At The Mouth Over SPD Comrade Vahrenholt
I must admit that over the last record-breaking 10 days here at NTZ, it’s been interesting to watch the climate activists and the end-of-the world whackos hyperventilate about Fritz Vahrenholt’s and Sebastian Lüning’s questioning of climate science.
Italy - 1.5 billion damage from ice and snow
“Still an emergency with dozens of countries from Emilia to Abruzzo covered by meters of snow.”
President’s Budget Doubles Down on Eco-Car Fiasco
The president’s phony green economy is collapsing, drip by drip. While the rest of country is frantically trying to turn off the tap, it’s like the president has turned up his environmental music so loud he can no longer hear the coming cascade.
Consider the president’s clean car initiative, which has already funneled $5 billion into the electric car industry. Ener1—an electric car manufacturer who received $118 million from the Obama Department of Energy—went bankrupt two weeks ago. Fisker Automotive is downsizing and firing workers because the stimulus money that supported their green jobs ran out. Its battery supplier and fellow stimulus recipient A123 will also be down-and-out if Fisker goes. Even while the industry continues to receive tax credits for electric car sales, electric car manufacturers Aptera and Think both went bankrupt this month.
AP useful idiot Seth Borenstein claims that there are "sensational parts" somewhere in the non-fake FakeGate documents
INFLUENCE GAME: Leaks show group's climate efforts :: WRAL.com
WASHINGTON — Leaked documents from a prominent conservative think tank show how it sought to teach schoolchildren skepticism about global warming and planned other behind-the-scenes tactics using millions of dollars in donations from big corporate names....Flashback: Climategate: AP asks believers to give the all clear | Herald Sun Andrew Bolt Blog
Heartland is one of the loudest voices denying man-made global warming, hosting the largest international scientific conference of skeptics on climate change. Several of its documents were leaked this week to the news media, showing the planning and money behind its efforts. Heartland said some of the documents weren't accurate, but declined to be more specific.
...The most sensational parts of the documents — and much of what has been confirmed independently — had to do with global warming and efforts to spread doubt into what mainstream scientists are saying. Experts long have thought Heartland and other groups were working to muddy the waters about global warming, said Harry Lambright, a Syracuse University public policy professor who specializes in environment, science and technology issues.
"Scientifically there is no controversy. Politically, there is a controversy because there are political interest groups making it a controversy," Lambright said. "It's not about science. It's about politics. To some extent they are winning the battle."
Borenstein is sure the Climategate emails don’t amount to much because he asked global warming believers if they now admitted they were wrong.AP’s Seth Borenstein is just too damn cozy with the people he covers – time for AP to do something about it | Watts Up With That?
On Jul 23, 2009, at 11:54 AM, Borenstein, Seth wrote:
Kevin, Gavin, Mike,
It’s Seth again. Attached is a paper in JGR today that
Marc Morano is hyping wildly. It’s in a legit journal. Whatchya think?
Seth
Seth Borenstein
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I’m warming (pun intended) to his Gleickness as suspect #1. Excellent bit of detective work there. Supporting data:
1. We know that Gleick is willing to deceive to support his noble cause, as evidenced by his fictionalized review of Donna’s book, which he clearly had not read, followed by his subsequent protestations to have read it.
2. He has a history of being bad at managing the deception and being rather tone deaf about how the real world will perceive (and see through) his deception.
3. As you mentioned, the faked document elevates Gleick himself as a high profile climate scientist. He’s not. Except maybe in his own mind. I’m chuckling at how that claim has to be annoying ‘the team’. Also, Forbes is elevated in stature, which happens to be where Gleick has recently started blogging.
4. The oddly tortured phraseology of ‘dissuading teachers from teaching science’ was, in my opinion, the farthest reach in the document. Interestingly, on Jan. 17th it was announced that Gleick has joined the board of NCSE, an organization that has increasingly conflated support for teaching evolution in schools with a new mission to support the teaching of global warming in schools. It’s clearly a top-of-mind hot button with Gleick. In joining a board as a new member, the whole concept of board packages and documents might also be top of mind.
5. Of course, your vocabulary and punctuation analysis is the most damning evidence. The PDF metadata is circumstantial but supporting. Taken as a whole, all these “multiple lines of independent evidence” raise the odds to “highly likely” (on the IPCC scale) that your suspicion is correct. Nicely done, sir.
In feeling the need to create the fake document and release it with the real ones, the FakeGater has confessed he didn’t think the real documents were damning. He felt it needed something more than was actually there. Otherwise, why take the substantial risk of ‘undermining’ the real documents with a fake? Particularly when there are so many supportive journalists willing to spin non-incriminating documents into a warmly smoking gun.