February 19, 2012 - 4:22 pm
The Heartland institute folks have now formally responded to the released documents. Here’s the most important paragraph:
1. The Fake Memo document is just that: fake. It was not written by anyone associated with Heartland. It does not express Heartland’s goals, plans, or tactics. It contains several obvious and gross misstatements of fact. Publication of this falsified document is improper and unlawful.
Heartland Institute is now asserting formally and legally that the particular memo is a fraud. DeSmogBlog and others continue to assert it’s not a fake. If they’re wrong, it could be fairly expensive.
Oooh! I bet discovery is gonna be fun if Heartland does sue DeSmogBlog.
Unless they can locate and prove who is the author, and that his stated intent was to be taken seriously and to harm Heartland, I doubt they could even get a court judgement. Unless they at least *claim* they could so prove, and make an initial showing, I gather they could not even get it to trial.
If they want to sue someone it should be the NYTimes, with DeSmogBlog thrown in as an afterthought. Deep pockets and all, plus presumably NYTimes has some standards. Yeah, I know, but are they really going to court and say, “Naw, we make stuff up all the time so this was just another day for us”? They might almost invite a judgement against!
Chucky Cheeto got one too. This is going to be ROFLcopters.
Well discovery will be very bad for Heartland and those anonymous donors and also they might have to release even more stuff. But I do find it ironic that Heartland is upset when they have taken stolen emails of scientists and totally misrepresented them in their publications. Ah the irony.
So let’s look at the Climate Strategy document they deny – In that document they mention that they are paying David Woljick a coal company consultant $5000 per module to develop k-12 curricula denying global warming and guess what – he verified it and said it was accurate.
Article below by AP Science Writer Seth Borenstein:
http://www.wral.com/news/science/story/10741778/
Let the humiliation begin
Discovery? Discovery??? Are you really that stupid?
Well maybe you can educate me on what happens when legal proceedings commence.
I wonder if you know how much is spent by the government on pro-global warming research and on green efforts including education. We’re talking many billions of dollars. And you’re pointing out $5000 being spent by skeptics. Get a brain.
Steve it was $5,000 per course and 20 courses for $100,000 and then it would handed out like candy to schools. Clearly you really didn’t think it would be $5,000.
97% of climatologist believe in Global Warming do you really think it not real?
At one point in time 100% of scientists thought fire was caused by “phlogiston.”
Were they right? Did the scientific rules change when 51% of them changed their minds?
So you are saying you know better than those scientists. You should publish your arguments as I’m sure they are most interesting and entertaining
Thanks, I got my hands full dealing with lefties like you as a contributor here.
Of course, you completely missed the point I was making, but that’s OK, I am sure the intelligent readers caught it.
Ha – your point? Do you understand the laws of reason and logic? If A happens then B happens? Or if A happened once then it going to happen to B.
Like most of your reasoning and posts here they are full of effluent.
I seem to understand them better than you do.
The point is, the number of scientists that believe in a theory has absolutely nothing to do with that theory’s validity… as the previously accepted phlogiston theory clearly shows. So do any number of other failed scientific theories, such as:
* The hollow earth theory, once proposed by Edmond Halley, the English astronomer, geophysicist, mathematician, meteorologist, and physicist of Halley’s Comet fame.
* Phrenology (the theory that bumps on one’s head were indicators of one’s personality).
* Geocentrism, which was the belief that the earth was the center of the universe.
Of course, you either couldn’t comprehend that, or you deliberately ignored it. I’m honestly inclined to believe the latter, because in the past you’ve shown yourself quite willing to ignore facts that don’t suit your pet theories.
FL, you should be careful with that 97 percent number. On investigation, it turned out, first, that this is only 79 respondents to an unscientific (self-selected, online) survey; and second, the questions asked were:
1. When compared with pre-1800s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?
2. Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?
Now, there are a couple of issues here. First, since the survey was self-selecting and directed at “mainstream” climate scientists — which group is largely defined by belief in CO2AGW — the sample was heavily loaded. Second, neither of those two statements actually asks about the CO2AGW hypothesis. Hardly anyone who is aware of the science disagrees with #1. #2 doesn’t correctly state the conventional CO2AGW hypothesis as pushed by IPCC and the AGW crowd, because they assert that humans are the DOMINANT factor in warming and specifically anthropogenic CO2 is the dominant mechanism. Because of the phrasing, that second question is significantly weaker in a set-theoretic sense than the AGW hypothesis it purports to support; it would include, for example, Roger Pielke Sr, who does think anthropogenic warming is significant but thinks changes in land0use patterns dominate, not CO2.
In other words, with a biased sample and a slanted question, hey still only got 97 percent of the group of fewer than 100 people they managed to get to respond to the survey.
Man adds a very small percent of Co2 as you know but unlike all the other they don’t remove any. It’s increasing at 2PPM every year now much faster than we thought and it’s about 390PPM which is way over any levels in the past 400,000 years for those here that do believe the earth is over 10,000 years old.
Let’s just cut the discussion of if it’s warming and let’s discuss what if anything we need to do about it. This discussion of whether is warming or not is really kind of stupid.
So we can look forward to not hearing about the 97 percent any longer?
You’re right, of course, that arguing about whether there is any warming is stupid; I imagine the glaring stupidity of that is exactly why the warming cult — the Think-Progress/Al Gore/Jim Hansen/Joe Romm activists as opposed to the actual scientists — insist on using it as a straw man to beat the skeptics with. Why address the real science when you can make shit up?
But given the warming, there’s still several steps that don’t get proper attention from the cultists: given there is warming
- what are the forcings that lead to the warming?
- which of those forcings are anthropogenic, man-caused?
- what is the magnitude of the anthropogenic component?
- what can we predict about future progress of this warming?
The cultists pretty well answer those questions with “human-caused CO2; ONLY human-caused CO2; human contributions completely dominate warming; DOOM!”
Scientifically, the answers are much fuzzier.
Charlie this is what the science says…
[Ah, hell, I missed another one. Look, think of Freshman Comp. Could you copy a whole article from someone else, publish it as your own, with one footnote to the source?]
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Are-humans-too-insignificant-to-affect-global-climate-intermediate.htm
John Boy? Is that you?
I’m beginning to think it is, Pat.
And if it really is John, returning after being banned, Bryan is gonna land on him like a ton of ban-hammers.
Well my name is John but I am not him.
Okay, FL, you get an F on the term paper. Try again.
(1) Asserting that humans are emitting 26 gigatonnes of CO2 per year is meaningless without comparison to other sources.
(2) Whatever the mechanism of the increase in GAST, it’s not enough to simply say “CO2 is a greenhouse gas and temperature is increasing so it much be CO2.”
(3) The CO2AGW hypothesis makes a number of predictions that are being confounded by real climate, eg, CO2 has gone up so GAST should go up too. The problem is that it hasn’t: GAST appears to be staying pretty level. Now, this is quite consistent with the CO2 saturation model of the effects of CO2; it’s also consistent with the model that suggests there is a long-period natural variation in GAST, either through some solar forcing or as a consequence of the large “flywheel” of ocean and atmospheric mass. The one thing it’s not consistent with is the CO2AGW hypothesis.
Well Charlie if you are saying Co2 is not a green house gas I can’t help you as that has been known for a long time. However I think it might be incumbent upon you to tell us what happens to the Co2 we are producing as it appears that Co2 has been rising at 2PPM and we are now at 390PPM or do you doubt those measurements? We know land does eat up a chunk of the Co2 but it appears close to half is sticking around and pH levels in the ocean seem to be eating the bulk of it as well. So if man has no effect what is driving this Co2 to levels never seen before?
I would think someone with your expertise would beyond this and be at the stage where let’s talk about what if anything we should do about this. However, as this is happening much faster than we thought it’s only a matter of time before the deniers (read Republican politicians and their puppet masters) will be thrown on the trash heap in the same way the round earth deniers were. Time is your enemy as well as our children’s.
FL, you’re not actually reading what I write at all, are you? You’ve just got a list of bullet points, and we’re down to the “raise the strawman that {insert ‘deniers’ name here} doesn’t believe CO2 is a greenhouse gas” bullet.
Really, I’ve very disappointed in the quality of your work.
Dr. Johnny also never really read what others wrote, he was gonna set up his straw men and knock ‘em down no matter what anyone else said.
The points of similarity keep piling up, don’t they?
I don’t think AP and FL are the same, but they sure fell out of the same tree.
FL- Using the Laws of Logic to defend a scientific consensus belies logic itself and excludes the Law of Discernment, which most of us struggle with (I’m not saying you do).
You’e right I don’t suffer from that but tried to when I was young
Discovery is a non-issue. I expect (as an attorney) that they will be granted at LEAST a confidentiality order, if not a protective order for the more sensitive information.
That said, the issue is whether (if it is a fake) the people publishing it knew that beforehand and published it anyway with a malicious intent. The media is usually immune from this kind of suit, in the absence of malicious publication of a known falsity.
Haruka, given first the fraudulent means employed to obtain the documents, second the forged “smoking gun” memo, and third the apparent co-ordination among many press outlets, don’t you think there’s pretty much a prima facie case for malice?
Charlie one would have to prove that the people receiving the documents were part of the mischief. Naturally it came from the inside so maybe there is more to come. I find it kind of ironic that Heartland who used stolen emails and distorted what those emails said is now caterwauling along with their supporters.
FL, I don’t think that’s true. Given the apparent co-ordination, and the way DeSmogBlog doubled down, I don’t think it’ll be hard to argue malice even if they weren’t directly involved in the fraud by which the real documents were suborned.
FL, here’s the problem: yes, we know Woljick was paid to develop course materials. However, the forged letter is the place where that’s turned into “points that are effective at dissuading teachers from teaching science.”
Only an idiot would say they wanted to dissueade teachers from teaching science, and in this particular case, the whole point is that Heartland Institute and any number of other “skeptics” believe that CO2-forced AGW is bad science.
As Megan McArdle says, “Basically, it reads like it was written from the secret villain lair in a Batman comic. By an intern.” And note that Megan is a CO2AGW believer.
There are also a number of errors of fact in the memo itself: for example, the Koch Foundation grant to Heartland was for healthcare topics, not climate change. (Before you get all excited about the Kock Foundation, note that the Berkeley BEST climate study receives significant support from the Koch Foundation: Koch is not anti-CO2AGW.) If you look at Anthony Watts’ “secret” website project, it notes the HI support on the landing page; the NIPCC reports have the HI logo on the title page in four-color.
Without the forged memo — and yes, I think it’s very probable it was forged, and suspect the forger will be found out before too long — what you have is some records that show Heartland was openly supporting conferences and publications that are published with Heartland’s name and logo, advocating a position that they, as an advocacy group, advocate.
And yes, the sun rose in the east this morning and is expected to rise in the east tomorrow morning.
Here’s my prediction: when the perpetrator is caught, he (in the generic) will be found to be connected to the pro-CO2AGW world. His motivation will turn out to have been that since the Climategate files were so damaging, he’s just get some files to damage the anti-CO2AGW side, and when he didn’t find a smoking gun he made one up.
He’ll also turn out to be less than 30 years old, tightly tied to other left-wing groups, and work in PR or something similar.
I say we have 6 investigations and at least one by Congress (maybe from Issa as he seems impartial) and get to the bottom of this.
Of course you reacted the same way about the email’s stolen from the University of East Anglia did you not?
Climategate emails were not forged. Has it ever been proven that they were stolen? I thought they were “leaked”. In any case, there’s lots of stuff in them that makes Michael Mann look like a terrible person and a bad scientist, if you’ve bothered to read them, but I guess not everyone can be bothered to look at Steve McIntyre’s blog, since he’s the devil or something, even though he isn’t a “denier”.
Poor Greg obviously has not actually read them either or if Greg did clearly did not understand them:
[We don't actually allow plagiarizing whole articles either. Sorry I didn't notice before.]
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Climategate-CRU-emails-hacked-advanced.htm
Oh, look, FL has discovered how to cut and paste entire articles onto the Tatler.
Dr. John used to do that all the time.
My, my, you must have had the same teacher at your Trolling Conservative Blogs 101 seminar.
I wrote probably 20 pieces on Climategate — remember I was one of the first to break the story — so go have a look. Speaking as a computer security expert — which I am, that’s my real day job expertise — it’s my opinion that the climategate files weren’t stolen by an outside hacker, but were gathered and revealed by an internal whistleblower. But in any case the tu quoque isn’t very interesting, since we know the authentic Heartland files were obtained by fraud — the fraudster and Heartland agree on the means — and the forgery is pretty blatant.
From your link
=================
“My goal is to help them teach one of the greatest scientific debates in history,” Wojick said. “This means teaching both sides of the science, more science, not less.”
Five government and university climate scientists contacted said they were most disturbed by Wojick’s project, fearing the teaching would be more propaganda rooted in politics than peer-reviewed science.
Businesses and other interests often offer free curriculum materials to financially strapped schools, hoping that teachers will use them and help disseminate their views or promote their products.
Energy Department spokeswoman Jen Stutsman said Wojick’s federal work has nothing to do with climate change and that the agency maintains that global warming is real and manmade.
==============================
We all know about ‘pal-review’.
We all know about ‘the cause’
We all know about the grant spigot that feeds ‘government and university’ “”climate research”"
This: fearing the teaching would be more propaganda rooted in politics than peer-reviewed science. – screams projection and blind faith in the priestly class of ‘climate pharisees’
Who are these five government and university climate scientists contacted? They could be Political Scientists.. Botanists.. Chemists.. Who knows?
As far as I know, there is no such technical designation bestowed by any body that confers the title of “Climate Scientist”
My grandmother working her garden is a “Climate Scientist”.. Who is to say otherwise?
Then there is this.. SETH BORENSTEIN plugs “Forecast the Facts” in your link..
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/22/forecastthefacts-org-political-activists-gagging-our-tv-meteorologists-on-climate-issues/
…..
UPDATE: Forecastthefacts.org (operated by Citizen Engagement Lab) is a George Soros funded activist website. Here’s the proof (h/t to WUWT reader Jan)
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/cel-soros.png?w=482&h=405
And FTF is a witchhunter..
Forecast the Facts defines a denier as anyone who expressly refutes the overwhelming scientific consensus about climate change: that it is real, largely caused by humans, and already having profound impacts on our world. Forecast the Facts also includes meteorologists who have suggested that extreme cold spells or snowstorms disprove climate science. We track the views of meteorologists through their on-air statements, blog posts, social media activity, public appearances, interviews, and interactions with viewers.
You are slandering David Woljick. Please link to or quote what Woljick has written about his project for the Heartland Institute. Woljick has written about it at other places.
Go back and re-read, Jim: I think that’s defending Woljick and trashing Borenstein.
By their very nature communist trolls can not be educated.
Sounds like a job for the “Truth Team”.
http://www.barackobama.com/truth-team
Flaming Idiot: First off, if modern climatology is science so is playing Sim City.
AGW fails on both scientific and economic counts.
The scientific argument against AGW is a follows:
1) The climate is a chaotic system. It is, in fact, the original chaotic system.
2) Chaotic systems cannot be modeled, certainly not long term. They are so sensitive to initial conditions that the calculation errors quickly swamp any signal.
3) We know that current climate models have used inaccurate founding assumptions, such as sensitivity to insolation and the effect of cosmic rays on cloud formation. When you have inaccurate data going into a bad model the only way you are going to get the right answer is with insanely large error bars or blind stupid luck.
The economic argument is even easier. We have two choices: Fix global warming or live with it. In order to decide we need to figure the costs of each. Since we’re not even sure what is causing AGW we don’t know how to fix it, nor how much a fix would cost. We certainly don’t know the costs of dealing with it. What we do know is that current proposed solutions are hideously expensive and, by AGW proponents’ own calculations, marginally effective. Only an idiot would advocate such a course of action.
“…if modern climatology is science so is playing Sim City.”
Nice turn of phrase.
Jeff of course scientists don’t know anything about science. Now that is a novel argument as most sentient beings would not have thought to use that one.
“Jeff of course scientists don’t know anything about science.”
Can’t respond to what he wrote, so you made something up?