From Climategate to Denialgate

Scofflaw

Duiske wrote: »

Heartland published lists of donor's until about 2006, when donor's began reporting threats and abuse from climate fanatics. Jim Lakely, Communications Director at HI, today released e-mail discussions between himself and Peter Gleick regarding an invite to Gleick to speak at a Heartland conference. This very issue was discussed in the e-mails.

It was, but the reasons aren't either what you gave, or necessarily credible:

Heartland Institute wrote:

• People who disagree with our views have taken to selectively disclosing names of donors who they think are unpopular in order to avoid addressing the merits of our positions. Listing our donors makes this unfair and misleading tactic possible. By not disclosing our donors, we keep the focus on the issue.

I'm sure that being funded by tobacco companies is completely irrelevant to HI's interventions in the smoking "debate"...in favour of tobacco companies. We can have another look at that letter to Philip Morris pointing out that "no-one does more for your bottom line", if you like.

Heartland Institute wrote:

• We have procedures in place that protect our writers and editors from undue influence by donors. This makes the identities of our donors irrelevant.

That's kind of hilarious, given the material in the HI documents, where the discussion of campaign plans make it clear HI's output is tailored to the interests of its donors. See above re Philip Morris letter.

Heartland Institute wrote:

• We frequently take positions at odds with those of the individuals and companies who fund us, so it is unfair to them as well as to us to mention their funding when expressing our point of view.

I'm sure. Would there be examples of such positions?

Heartland Institute wrote:

• No corporate donor gives more than 5 percent of our budget, and most give far less than that. We have a diverse funding base that is too large to accurately summarize each time we issue a statement.

Nicely weaseled, considering that one Anonymous Donor gives up to 60% of HI's budget.

This would be a credible list of reasons for an independent think tank. Pity HI's internal documents show it not to be one.

cordially,
Scofflaw

RichieC

haha, yea their big defence of Walmarts employer practices was not influenced by their 300k donation... not at all. it was lucky coinkydink!

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

karma_

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

Seventeen pages in, and the above line is all we actually get from you on the crux of the matter.

So far your argument has amounted to, in it's most basic form - 'It is acceptable to lie to people for profit.'

Sixteen pages of defending that ideal, and attacking the man who obtained the documents, and this is all you have to say about the HI?

Your problem is that you are politicising science.

Scofflaw

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

That is indeed a nuanced - and somewhat discursive - comment. As karma_ notes, we've gone 17 pages into this before we got to that.

It may come as a surprise to you - although it shouldn't - that my position is equally nuanced. I haven't called for Heartland to be abolished by government fiat - although I do think any pretence that they're not a PR agency pushing politics into science in defence of paying clients' interest is laughable, and with it the idea that their tax-exempt status is in any way justified.

Nor do I care about "evil right-wing billionaires". Everyone is entitled to their view, and entitled to spend money promoting or defending that view. That they happen to have more to spend than the next guy neither makes their views more admirable, nor less.

I can fully appreciate that what worries many opponents of climate change is not the science but the policies - which is why I have referred to it as a scientific policy debate. Many of the solutions that have been proposed are indeed wrong-headed, short-sighted, contradictory, etc etc, and some of them are even left-wing as well. I have very little time, for example, for the "climate justice" brigade, who I regard as bandwagon-jumpers of the first degree - the idea that we should do nothing about climate change unless what we do is somehow redistributory patently regards the problem as secondary to the opportunity to push ideology.

But I have no difficulty at all in stating that what Heartland are doing is simply wrong. Misinformation is common enough in complex debates without deliberately manufacturing disinformation for profit - one's own or other people's.

And I'm not calling for Heartland be regulated out of existence, because those with the power to regulate such things are wrong at least as often as they're right.

I'm not looking for anything other than Heartland's disinformation to be clearly seen as such, because they are poisoning the debate. And, as such, I'm not impressed by the attempt to make this about Gleick, because that's just a way of covering up what Heartland are doing. You're playing by Heartland's book here, and endeavouring mightily to draw attention away from tactics you have described as misguided and wrong-headed - helping to try to make people not look clearly at what Heartland are doing.

That's not a contribution to an honest debate - and surely the ability to have honest debate is the point of free speech, not the protection of paid-for lies? You know how easy the anti-science game is, and you know that people get harmed as a result of people playing the anti-science card, whether out of personal belief or to protect their bottom line.

I don't see how protecting deliberate examples of dishonesty in complex debates can be moral whatever your political beliefs, and I cannot see how a political belief that justifies dishonesty can be anything other than immoral in itself. If we are not honest, then we cannot be free - we are only wearing our chains on the inside.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Valmont

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

This is exactly the issue--repeatedly trying to conceptualise the debate exclusively in terms of denying or accepting the science; which is limiting consider what is at stake. The policy decisions resulting from the science affect individuals who choose to smoke, who choose to drive big cars and these issues are what drive the 'non-scientific' opposition.

Because, no matter how you spin it, the realm of debate shifts from the exclusively scientific to the moral and ethical--especially when you are proposing to coerce people to behave in certain ways. This point concerning the conceptual shift needed to discuss the implementation of scientifically informed policy is one that seems to have escaped the scientific technocrats.

Valmont

For those interested: A summary of the sceptic's position on the science.

RandomName2

Scofflaw wrote: »

The US' Heartland Institute, a conservative/libertarian thinktank, is in a little spot of PR bother after internal documents (all but one verified, the unverified one containing information repeated in the others) show their network of climate denial funding:

Public relations and truth are two separate issues.

Whilst objectivity and funding are not mutually exclusive properties, I am looking for (and not finding) bogus reports (unlike.. ah.. investigations which 'confirmed' climate change/global warming/cooling). Hockey stick graphs anyone?

Edit: Anyway, as Permabear said, free-speech is a fundamentally good thing. Otherwise one would have to question the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on schlock propaganda such as An Inconvenient Truth, The Day After Tomorrow, The Day the Earth Stood Still (remake), etc. No, seriously, despite the fact that these are distinctly anti-science, they are just "films".

20Cent

Valmont wrote: »

For those interested: A summary of the sceptic's position on the science.

Taking scientific knowledge from an economics website can't be a good idea.

Climate change has only been made a "left" "right" issue artificially by think tanks such as Heartland in order to divide and conquer. Thought libertarians were against harming others? Damaging the climate harms others.

SupaNova

20Cent wrote: »

Taking scientific knowledge from an economics website can't be a good idea.

Did you even look at the article? The graphs in the article speak for themselves, and the sources are given at the bottom of the article. Maybe you missed that.:o And knowing how previous predictions have been way off from what has happened in reality is a good idea, if you want to deal with the topic in an honest manner.

20Cent

SupaNova wrote: »

Did you even look at the article? The graphs in the article speak for themselves, and the sources are given at the bottom of the article. Maybe you missed that.:o And knowing how previous predictions have been way off from what has happened in reality is a good idea, if you want to deal with the topic in an honest manner.

I wonder who funds the Mises Institute?

SupaNova

Right wing billionaires.

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

BluntGuy

Valmont wrote: »

For those interested: A summary of the sceptic's position on the science.

Nice to see the Hansen myth doing the rounds again.

The climate models overestimate temperature rises due to CO2 by at least a factor of three.

Except they don't. I actually can't describe this as anything less than a blatant lie, based on manipulation of data. It owes its origins to the Libertarian think tank The Cato Institute's Patrick Michaels who deliberately omitted chunks of Hansen's data to support this claim.

SupaNova

BluntGuy wrote: »

Nice to see the Hansen myth doing the rounds again.



Except they don't. I actually can't describe this as anything less than a blatant lie, based on manipulation of data. It owes its origins to the Libertarian think tank The Cato Institute's Patrick Michaels who deliberately omitted chunks of Hansen's data to support this claim.

The article shows Hansen's prediction vs reality, please tell me how this is manipulation of data???

BluntGuy

SupaNova wrote: »

The article shows Hansen's prediction vs reality, please tell me how this is manipulation of data???

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/hansens-1988-projections/

This provides an excellent explanation of how Hansen's findings correlate with the reality of the situation.

The manipulation I refer to is the source of the claim of a factor of "at least 3" or "300%" as I've had more commonly said to me before in other debates. It comes from Patrick Michaels deliberately omitting the Scenario B and Scenario C from his analysis of Hansen's findings. Despite the rather clear evidence that the Scenario B (which Hansen himself remarked was the most likely), taking into account its modest offset from recorded data, actually corroborates the Climate change predictions rather than defeats such notions, this myth continues to go on repeated, often unchallenged.

karma_

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

It's a bit late in the day to now play the 'consistency' card, not when you spent sixteen pages crying 'GLEICK, GLEICK, GLEICK... Heartland'. That's not consistency, in fact that's the opposite. It also speaks volumes that the worst condemnation you have to offer about the HI is that they are 'misguided and wrong-headed' (twice no less). So please, spare us the rhetoric, you're fooling no one, bar yourself I imagine.

Also, if I have to read one more sentence by Megan McAdrle, I joke you not I will be physically ill.

And... Don't get me started on 'partisan advocacy'.

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

karma_

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

Free speech? Using that to defend the HI is an affront to anyone who has ever stood up, demanded and defended the right of free speech. Free speech does not automatically allow you the right to knowingly disseminate lies.

Memnoch

karma_ wrote: »

Free speech? Using that to defend the HI is an affront to anyone who has ever stood up, demanded and defended the right of free speech. Free speech does not automatically allow you the right to knowingly disseminate lies.

Right and wrong. Free speech does allow you to lie, as it allows others to correct your lies. But the part that is reprehensible and detestable is when people try to argue that because of the idea of free speech, the lies and PR spin don't matter or aren't significant. That it's free speech that's at stake. That somehow, pointing out these people are liars and that their 'free speech,' is bought and paid for, it is somehow an attack on free speech itself.

What a horribly dishonest position to take. And like you said, it diminishes the concept and value of free speech.

Shame on them.

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

Memnoch

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

I'm not interested in engaging your whataboutry and disingenuous debating tactics to continue to deflect, obfuscate, deflect, obfuscate.

BluntGuy

Memnoch wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

To be fair, while I disagree with Heartland's position on the science, this is a perfectly legitimate question:

Permabear wrote:

This post has been deleted.

Hayte

What about them? Answers in Genesis are irrelevant and only get mentioned to draw fire away from Heartland and to drag some religion vs science into this thread.

The question is also loaded because it assumes that if another organization with similar modus operandi has 501(c)(3) status, then Heartland deserves it too. The question implies that but not the idea that both organisations do not deserve tax exempt status to spread disinformation.

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

oscarBravo

Without reading the primary legislation, Wikipedia says that "501(c)(3) exemptions apply to corporations, and any community chest, fund, cooperating association or foundation, organized and operated exclusively for religious, charitable, scientific, testing for public safety, literary, or educational purposes, to foster national or international amateur sports competition, to promote the arts, or for the prevention of cruelty to children or animals."

Presumably Heartland claims either scientific or educational purposes or both, but that's the point that people will argue. Answers in Genesis is overtly religious, so there's no real argument there.

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

oscarBravo

I don't take issue with any of your post, but this is worthy of discussion:

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

The key word there is "claims". There's a case to be made that a government shouldn't hand out tax-exempt status based on a mere claim.

This, of course, raises the question: what should the standard be? Should an organisation be considered educational if it teaches something that is, objectively, untrue? Should it only be considered charitable if it gives money to causes that can be usefully described as "needy" (in the sense of poverty)?

A religious claim is an easy one to stake. All you have to do is be an organisation that teaches people things that are objectively unrealistic.

Is there an objective bar that the US government requires that organisations meet before granting 501(c) status?

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

Hayte

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

Asserting that Jesus Christ rose from the dead and that the earth was created in six days is fine - that is part of a voluntary belief system that anyone can subscribe to for benign reasons. There is a world of difference between this and using scientific falsehoods (informed or motivated by religious beliefs) as a weapon to discredit scientific facts.

If you want to make a case for why Answers in Genesis deserve 501(c)(3) relief for educational purposes via the Creation Museum then feel free to make a thread about it.

Nevertheless, you are attempting to conflate what Answers in Genesis does with what Heartland does and you have partly succeeded because you have already gotten several posters (including me) to talk about Answers in Genesis instead of Heartland. They are not the same organisation. For this reason, I will not be entertaining this tangent any further but I would be happy to engage you on these issues if you wish to make a separate thread about it.

What are the implications for religious and academic freedom in both cases? And who decides what exactly constitutes "disinformation"?

How many politicians are prepared to state in public that creationism and the divinity of Christ are just carefully orchestrated disinformation campaigns that have gone on far too long and that need to be stopped?

You are perfectly entitled to practice your religious beliefs privately. You are perfectly entitled to publicize those beliefs too.

The thing about climate science is that it is a science, which means that it allows for criticism whereby the critic assumes the burden of proof in a system of peer review. The scientific method is inherently skeptical and demands the highest standard of proofs to overturn consensus. If you have factual, meritorious denials of human influenced climate change then show them. Unfortunately for you, none of the denials actually stand up to scientific rigor which is why there is no danger of the scientific consensus being overturned except by disinformation campaigns.

What you can't do with religion and academics is use scientific falsehoods to obscure scientific facts in the interests of steering social policy in a different direction for the sole benefit of private interested parties. These falsehoods are not based upon reasonable skepticism but malicious distortion of facts and outright falsification. I would go so far as to say that where proven this is criminally irresponsible.

So what about Dr. Peter Gleick? He had to fall on his sword for precisely these reasons and he has done so, for the deception involved in acquiring the leaked documents. Heartland's assertion that a memo was forged cannot be disputed at this time but it nevertheless shows no obvious and gross misstatement of fact. It is still not known who forged the document as alleged.

At this point its just a shame that a lapse of judgement like this threatens to overshadow the career of a person who by all accounts is a peerless environmental scientist. Even more shameful is that this incident is being used in a disinformation campaign to obscure evidence of Heartland's own disinformation campaign - a fact that Scofflaw has repeatedly pointed out in this thread and which you willfully ignored for some 16 pages.

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

Memnoch

The policy response is not driven by the left. The policy response is driven by the consensus of what the same scientists who tell us that man made climate change is happening say we should be doing about it.

From all accounts that I can tell, the political response has been far and away behind what the scientific community want us to do about climate change.

It is a political argument in one sense and one sense only. Those that do not want to do what is required to deal with the problem, because it will hamper their personal profit, supported by two groups of people: 1) those who don't understand or respect the scientific method 2) free market idealogues, have attacked the debate at every level to undermine the reality that global scientific consensus is agreed upon.

Thus far the 'free market,' has failed to propose any remote suggestion to combat climate change, at least none that any decent group of scientists can agree has an even minute chance of working, if they propose a solution at all. No, they would rather we keep our head in the sand and despite permabears protestations, the thrust of the majority of right wing opposition, including the Heartland institute, which he so ardently defends, is to argue the science, not the so called politics. Because they know, that if they acknowledge the science for what it is saying, they've already lost.

As to the issue of creationism. This is typical permabear debating tactics. Whataboutry and strawman. If he wants to have a debate about the Answers to genesis group he can start a thread on it. To ask or expect posters debating heartland and climate change to defend or argue about a creationism supporting group that they might neither support, or even have been aware of is off topic and highly disingenous. But after 17 pages of these tactics, everyone should expect that by now.

Scofflaw

BluntGuy wrote: »

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/hansens-1988-projections/

This provides an excellent explanation of how Hansen's findings correlate with the reality of the situation.

The manipulation I refer to is the source of the claim of a factor of "at least 3" or "300%" as I've had more commonly said to me before in other debates. It comes from Patrick Michaels deliberately omitting the Scenario B and Scenario C from his analysis of Hansen's findings. Despite the rather clear evidence that the Scenario B (which Hansen himself remarked was the most likely), taking into account its modest offset from recorded data, actually corroborates the Climate change predictions rather than defeats such notions, this myth continues to go on repeated, often unchallenged.

It's interesting that this has rather obviously become one of the latest climate opposition "talking points". Again, just as we're seeing with the "concentrate on Gleick" tactic, members of the climate change opposition everywhere online seem rarely to deviate far from the same PR line - something which has been the case for a number of years.

It would be interesting to do a semantic analysis of the climate change opposition's output to see just how tight message management is in the movement.

cordially,
Scofflaw

ed2hands

Scofflaw wrote: »

It would be interesting to do a semantic analysis of the climate change opposition's output to see just how tight message management is in the movement.

cordially,
Scofflaw

This guy would probably be a good person to ask.
http://birdbrainscan.blogspot.com/2008/11/faces-of-climate-science-why.html

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

Scofflaw

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

I certainly can't see how it's a good idea that climate scientists play dirty. That just feeds into the damage people like Heartland are already doing to public acceptance of science.

The "wider good" in a single debate can't be served by damaging the credibility of virtually the only technique we have for arriving at objective analysis.

cordially,
Scofflaw

steddyeddy

Scofflaw wrote: »

The US' Heartland Institute, a conservative/libertarian thinktank, is in a little spot of PR bother after internal documents (all but one verified, the unverified one containing information repeated in the others) show their network of climate denial funding:



BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17048991

That well-known liberal outlet, The Economist: http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2012/02/climate-change-scepticism

Desmogblog: http://www.desmogblog.com/heartland-institute-exposed-internal-documents-unmask-heart-climate-denial-machine

Looking at some of the places this has been reported online, it's interesting to see a little army of commenters swinging into action with well-crafted PR comebacks, which attempt to make the debate about the unverified document, or downplay the incident entirely.

cordially,
Scofflaw

I dont understand climate change denial in the slightest. The value that the biosphere (the biological component of the earth system) which depends on the atmosphere in part has been valued in the trillions. We cannot afford to ignore the slightest possibility that things can change. Cliamte change will affect everything.

RichieC

steddyeddy wrote: »

I dont understand climate change denial in the slightest. The value that the biosphere (the biological component of the earth system) which depends on the atmosphere in part has been valued in the trillions. We cannot afford to ignore the slightest possibility that things can change. Cliamte change will affect everything.

We cannot afford to Ignore it but the Rich can. The "deniers" are simply foot soldiers of this immense and powerful lobby. They also lobby to reduce government size, thus, reducing its power to regulate and legislate on inconvenient things like pollution and climate change, workers rights, health and safety.

But don't worry, it has nothing to do with simply stacking everything in their own favour. it's about freedom!

They call themselves Libertarians. they in fact are just a loose affiliation of lobbyists in favour of keep themselves rich.

We just need to hope that green energy and not polluting suddenly become highly profitable. It's the only way they will ever accept the science.

BluntGuy

Scofflaw wrote: »

It's interesting that this has rather obviously become one of the latest climate opposition "talking points". Again, just as we're seeing with the "concentrate on Gleick" tactic, members of the climate change opposition everywhere online seem rarely to deviate far from the same PR line - something which has been the case for a number of years.

It would be interesting to do a semantic analysis of the climate change opposition's output to see just how tight message management is in the movement.

Absolutely. Given the stark parallels between the creationism "controversy" and the global warming "debate", one might also wonder if there is some analogue of the "Wedge Document" among denialist circles. There are certainly revealing documents here and there, but nothing that quite so clearly and egregiously lays out a misinformation strategy as that particular one, in my experience.

Scofflaw

BluntGuy wrote: »

Absolutely. Given the stark parallels between the creationism "controversy" and the global warming "debate", one might also wonder if there is some analogue of the "Wedge Document" among denialist circles. There are certainly revealing documents here and there, but nothing that quite so clearly and egregiously lays out a misinformation strategy as that particular one, in my experience.

I think some of the difference might be explained by the fact that the climate "debate" is a moving target, requiring a flexible and evolving 'message', while the climate movement is hoping to influence movers and shakers, and as such requires at least a basic level of credibility, and the abandonment of scientifically untenable positions.

There was a period where, for example, every 'sceptic' you met appeared to be firmly convinced that solar changes explained current climate changes. While there are a few vestiges of that belief, most have moved on, and the current talking point appears to be climate change sensitivity, with the 'sceptics' setting up a straw man of x3 sensitivity as the only predicted sensitivity.

So the debate over climate is - with apologies - still evolving, while the debate on evolution largely isn't. Also, there's no danger of climate change being seen as a religious issue, so the US church-state separation doesn't affect it.

On the other hand, something that is very visible is that climate change has become a party issue primarily in the US, but also to some extent in the UK. The US data is unequivocal:



http://www.environmentmagazine.org/Archives/Back%20Issues/September-October%202008/dunlap-full.html

Hence we have, for example, (not singling you out!) Permabear's reiteration of "left-wing" on this thread as something pertinent to the science. Science is, of course, neither left-wing nor right-wing, but the relevance of political position to the "debate" as opposed to the science is strong, and leads to people who would ordinarily support scientific conclusions, such as Permabear (this time I am), having to reverse that support in this particular case because not to do so is to fail, implicitly, to defend their political position.

Obviously the simplest way of dealing with the resulting conflict in internal values is to dismiss the science of climate change as a conspiracy - so it becomes "not-science" - but that option isn't really open under challenge to anyone who is capable of logical thought, since the required conspiracy is far far larger than, for example, that required to bring about faked Moon landings. A far preferable strategy, in that case, is to hold onto scientifically valid doubts, even where these are extremely limited compared to the positive evidence - in extremis one can opt for the Freeman Dyson approach of claiming that you just can't do climate prediction. And I would expect to see that position grow in strength going forward, as other valid positions of doubt are swept away - it's the climate debate equivalent of the final "God isn't amenable to science" argument open to the religious, although it lacks the complete opt-out nature of that argument, since climate science rather clearly is science.

So something like the Wedge document is both unnecessary - since there's no church-state separation to overcome - and would entirely blow the opposition case if it existed, because the climate change "debate" has to at least look like a scientifically credible one, whereas creationists fundamentally don't care about that. And that's really the importance of the Heartland documents, because it makes it very clear that a major player on the opposition side has no real interest in scientific credibility, but only in what works in PR terms.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Kinski

Scofflaw wrote: »

there's no danger of climate change being seen as a religious issue

*Ahem*

Nearly 6-in-10 (58%) Americans say that the severity of recent natural disasters is evidence of global climate change, compared to 44% of Americans who say that the severity of recent natural disasters is evidence of what the Bible calls the 'end times.'

Valmont

Scofflaw wrote: »

since climate science rather clearly is science.

Although, as you fail to acknowledge, the resulting legislation is not science; it's politics. Asking someone to debate legislation affecting the free choices of individuals in terms of "peer review" and "objectivity" is clearly confusing the issue.

Scofflaw wrote: »

Obviously the simplest way of dealing with the resulting conflict in internal values is to dismiss the science of climate change as a conspiracy - so it becomes "not-science" - but that option isn't really open under challenge to anyone who is capable of logical thought, since the required conspiracy is far far larger than, for example, that required to bring about faked Moon landings.

How you can compare something as overt as landing on the moon with changes in the earth's temperature and its resultant impact is beyond me; for someone criticizing the Heartland Institute so strongly, you're not averse to Red Herrings yourself. Let's look at some nefarious tactics from one side of the climate change debate

Mike Hulme - founder of the Tyndall Center for Climate Change - "Scientists and Politicians must trade truth for influence."

The Obama administration suppressed an EPA draft pointing out the inconsistencies between the AGW hypothesis and the data collected.

The Hockey Stick. No elaboration needed.

Also indications that "Peer-review" itself may be subverted.

Climategate email: "We'll keep them out somehow - even if we have to define what the peer-review literature is!"

The difference between faking a moon landing and pushing climate science in a certain direction is that for the latter, only a few powerful individuals with vested interests (certain elements of government, tenured professors) need to conspire about anything. But I do realise we differ on the "State = Good and holy" axiom required to believe the whole politically motivated fraud that is the AGW lobby in its various forms.

Scofflaw

Valmont wrote: »

Although, as you fail to acknowledge, the resulting legislation is not science; it's politics. Asking someone to debate legislation affecting the free choices of individuals in terms of "peer review" and "objectivity" is clearly confusing the issue.

And I'd agree with you, were it not for the fact that you're about to go on to attack the science:

Valmont wrote: »

How you can compare something as overt as landing on the moon with changes in the earth's temperature and its resultant impact is beyond me; for someone criticizing the Heartland Institute so strongly, you're not averse to Red Herrings yourself. Let's look at some nefarious tactics from one side of the climate change debate

Mike Hulme - founder of the Tyndall Center for Climate Change - "Scientists and Politicians must trade truth for influence."

The Obama administration suppressed an EPA draft pointing out the inconsistencies between the AGW hypothesis and the data collected.

The Hockey Stick. No elaboration needed.

Also indications that "Peer-review" itself may be subverted.

Climategate email: "We'll keep them out somehow - even if we have to define what the peer-review literature is!"

The difference between faking a moon landing and pushing climate science in a certain direction is that for the latter, only a few powerful individuals with vested interests (certain elements of government, tenured professors) need to conspire about anything. But I do realise we differ on the "State = Good and holy" axiom required to believe the whole politically motivated fraud that is the AGW lobby in its various forms.

There's a lot of ways of swallowing a camel, apparently. How does one "push" science without making it not science? You can only give research a direction by pushing from the top, which means you can only stipulate what gets investigated - changing the results, on the other means a massive conspiracy involving everyone who has done the research. And, as has also been pointed out, there are people on the opposition side with deep enough pockets and sufficient public influence to make safe harbours for anyone who breaks ranks with the conspiracy - but that's not something we see.

That's why Heartland doesn't do research - because it's cheaper to do PR, and the results (and researchers) never contradict your position.

Coming back to your first point:

Valmont wrote: »

Although, as you fail to acknowledge, the resulting legislation is not science; it's politics. Asking someone to debate legislation affecting the free choices of individuals in terms of "peer review" and "objectivity" is clearly confusing the issue.

The science is obviously relevant to the "debate" (as per your attack on it) because it defines the nature and scope of the problem, which in turn because self-evidently, there's no point in legislation to address the scientific problem of climate change that doesn't actually address the problem, determines a lot of the possible policy/legislative responses. If nobody has come up with a way of addressing the problem without affecting individual choice, maybe that's because there isn't a way to do it - although it's also possible that the 'free market' side has simply opted out of the necessary thought and coordinated response necessary to achieve the goal through entirely free choices.

Having said that, carbon pricing is pretty close to being a market solution that recognises the impact of greenhouse emissions. Yet the preference has still been to attack the science.

cordially,
Scofflaw

RichieC

Lovely, hopefully more will follow.

Citing its corporate stance that climate change is real, General Motors announced Wednesday that its General Motors Foundation would no longer be funding the Heartland Institute, a free-market think tank that has attacked human-caused global warming as “junk science.”

The announcement was not made in a company statement, but rather in communications with Greg Dalton of Climate One, an ongoing dialog about the environment at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco.

“General Motors has decided to discontinue funding of the Heartland Institute, an organization that downplays the risks of climate disruption, three weeks after GM Chairman and CEO Dan Akerson was asked about it during a Climate One radio interview,” says the first graph of the Wednesday post on the Climate One site.

“Yep, it’s true,” said Greg Martin, a GM spokesperson. “Dan Akerson was giving remarks at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco a few weeks ago, and the issue of GM’s very modest and previous contribution to Heartland came up, and Mr. Akerson said he’d look into it. And we’ve looked into it, and we’ve decided to discontinue it.

“As Dan said at the Commonwealth Club, GM’s operating its business as if climate change is real.”

The development is fallout from the release of Heartland Institute funding documents in February, which showed that GM contributed $15,000 to Heartland in 2010 and 2011. Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute and a MacArthur “genius” grant recipient, revealed in February that he had assumed a false identity to obtain some of those documents.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/environment/la-me-gs-gm-pulls-support-for-heartland-institute-20120330,0,4735180.story

steddyeddy

Delighted to hear that Riche thanks for the link. As a scientist myself though I would prefer to see other scientists being more forthcoming with their data over the coming years. Climate change will cost the global economy in the region of trillions (The estimatedvalue of the world ecosystems) and cant be ignored. My fear is that even when we see the affects of global warming on agriculture cumilate, some people will blame the effects on something else.

Batsy

There's no such thing as Global Warming.

RichieC

Batsy wrote: »

There's no such thing as Global Warming.

Conspiracy theory forums are that way --->

steddyeddy

Batsy wrote: »

There's no such thing as Global Warming.

Well I think your confusing global warming with human acceleration of global warming. No scientist or whoever has an objection to the fact that the world is getting hotter.

RichieC

steddyeddy wrote: »

Well I think your confusing global warming with human acceleration of global warming. No scientist or whoever has an objection to the fact that the world is getting hotter.

I'm not mixing anything up.

Batsy

Batsy wrote: »

There's no such thing as Global Warming.

Fantastic!

Submit your evidence for peer review, have it published, and collect your Nobel prize.