Climate change

[PassedOut]

The creationists aren't the only people working to dumb down education in the US: Will your kid be taught that climate change is a hoax?

 

And so, according to internal documents from the Heartland Institute, the group is paying $100,000 for David Wojick, a coal-industry consultant, to develop “modules” for classroom discussion. (Wojick has confirmed this.) These modules would include material for grades 10-12 on climate change (“whether humans are changing the climate is a major scientific controversy”) and carbon pollution (“whether CO2 is a pollutant is controversial”). In fact, none of these issues are scientific controversies — the vast majority of climatologists believe, with a high degree of confidence, that man-made carbon-dioxide emissions are heating the planet.

 

But could Heartland actually spread its views? Rosenau says that Heartland could do what creationist groups like the Discovery Institute have been doing for years and simply mail out supplemental materials to educators far and wide. “There will be teachers who are sympathetic to the skeptic view or who think the material looks useful, and they’ll say to themselves, okay, I’ll bring this into the classroom,” he explains. It’s worth noting that the Heartland Institute had already developed a video along these lines — titled “Unstoppable Solar Cycles,” which laid out the long-debunked theory that the sun is driving recent warming — and shipped it off to teachers. (These earlier efforts, according to one Heartland document, met with “only limited success.”)

 

Even if these materials turn out to be wildly inaccurate or out of sync with a state’s science-education standards, keeping tabs on their use would be quite difficult. “In almost all cases,” Rosenau says, “there are no policies that would prevent a teacher from using such material.” Quite the opposite: A few states, such as Louisiana, have non-binding laws that urge teachers to embrace “supplemental” material on heated topics like evolution and climate change.

Perhaps cigarette companies could send teachers supplemental material explaining that it is "controversial" to say that smoking can cause cancer. That would make just as much sense.

[Al_U_Card]

Is that the best you can come up with?

 

Almost as sad as the moral bankruptcy of the catastrophists.

 

What a sorry, expensive and disturbing mess.

[Al_U_Card]

Readin', writin', 'rithmetic and REAL SCIENCE as opposed to the bogus, don't release data from key studies, ad hom attack opponents, rely on models that continue to miss the mark and, of course, apply under-handed, behind-the-back pressure to "lesser lights" that they better toe the line, climatologist/advocate/scammers that are the current example.

 

Hopefully, Gleick's malfeasance will raise a groundswell of outrage within the scientific community and force the hand of the warmists to release the data, so that real science can continue even in this mostly guesswork area.

[Al_U_Card]

I can't emphasize how amusing it is to see quotes like the following from Al_U_Tard's corporate masters

 

Sorry I missed this but I am still laughing, thanks for that.

 

btw, speaking of memorable quotes, Dr. Peter Gleick is the warmist credited with the first coining of the phrase: "The debate is over."

 

How prescient.

 

Especially considering the manner of his refusal to debate his Forbe's magazine nemesis, James M. Taylor at the Heartland Inst. annual climate conference, all expenses paid as well as providing for a donation in his name to the charity of his choice.

 

Easy to understand why they wanted the debate to be over...

[Al_U_Card]

This pretty much sums it up.

 

What you see is what you get...

 

There never was a “leaker” in the shameful Fakegate scandal. In the end, there was only a forger, a fraudster and a thief. Alarmist scientist Peter Gleick has admitted that the latter two were one and the same person – himself. I suspect we will soon learn the identity of the forger, as well.

 

With the weight of damning evidence closing in on him, Gleick has admitted in his Huffington Post blog that he was the alleged “Heartland Insider” who committed fraud and identity theft, lying and stealing his way into possession of Heartland Institute internal personnel documents and then sending those private documents to global warming activist groups and left-leaning media. Gleick sent to the press an additional document, a fake “2012 Climate Strategy,” that he claims he did not write.

 

In short, Gleick set up an email account designed to mimic the email account of a Heartland Institute board member. Gleick then sent an email from that account to a Heartland Institute staffer, in which Gleick explicitly claimed to be the Heartland Institute board member. Gleick asked the staffer to email him internal documents relating to a recent board meeting. Soon thereafter, Gleick, while claiming to be a “Heartland Insider,” sent those Heartland Institute documents plus the forged “2012 Climate Strategy” document to sympathetic media and global warming activists.

 

While the legitimate Heartland Institute documents revealed personal, confidential and private information about Heartland Institute personnel, donors and programs, there was nothing scandalous in the documents. The documents merely showed the inner workings of an influential public policy organization operating on a budget that was quite small compared to environmental activist groups such as Greenpeace, the Sierra Club and Environmental Defense. Indeed, the internal documents refuted the false, yet often repeated assertions that the Heartland Institute’s powerful climate realism message is largely funded by Big Oil, Big Coal or Big Whatever.

 

The only thing that would seem to undermine the Heartland Institute’s credibility was the wording of the fake “2012 Climate Strategy” document. Computer forensics experts quickly discovered the climate strategy document was created by a different computer program and at a different time than the legitimate documents. The climate strategy document was also written in much different language, style, format and font than the legitimate documents. And long before Gleick confessed to being the fraudster and thief at the heart of the stolen documents, analysts noted a striking similarity between the language and style of the forged document and the language and style of Gleick’s public writings.

 

The real story in this Fakegate scandal is how the global warming movement is desperate, delusional and collapsing as global warming fails to live up to alarmist predictions. People with sound science on their side do not need to forge documents to validate their arguments or make the other side look bad. Also, people who are so desperate as to forge documents in an attempt to frame their rivals are clearly not above forging scientific data, studies and facts to similarly further their cause.

 

It is both striking and telling how global warming activists have failed to condemn the acts of forgery in the Fakegate scandal. For global warming activists, the ends justify the means – any means necessary to sell their alarmist message, even if they must sink to forgery and fakery.

 

It is also worth noting that Gleick repeatedly claims in his confession that his misconduct was motivated by a desire to create a rational public debate on global warming and that he was trying to fight back against the people he claims are seeking to prevent such a debate. Yet in January 2012 the Heartland Institute cordially invited Gleick to publicly debate me at our 2012 annual benefit dinner. All Gleick would had to have done is defeat me in that debate and he could have accomplished his twin goals of promoting public debate and embarrassing the Heartland Institute. Yet Gleick declined to participate in such a fair and open debate, and then on the very next day committed his acts of fraud and theft against the Heartland Institute.

 

Beyond our invitation to Gleick, the Heartland Institute has cordially invited dozens of scientists who believe humans are creating a global warming crisis to give presentations and to debate skeptics at our annual global warming conferences. Only one such scientist has ever accepted our offer.

 

If Gleick is indeed concerned about people preventing a public debate on global warming, he perhaps should have targeted his global warming activist colleagues rather than the Heartland Institute.

[Winstonm]

However, the statement from Heartland communications director, Jim Lakely, identifies only one of the eight documents posted online on Tuesday night by the DeSmogBlog website as a "total fake". That document, two pages headlined "Confidential Memo: Heartland Climate Strategy", largely duplicates information contained in the other documents.

 

Those documents – containing details on future projects such as a $100,000 campaign to "dissuade teachers from teaching science", as well as fundraising efforts – have been confirmed, in part, by Heartland itself, corporate donors such as Microsoft, and climate sceptic blogger Anthony Watts, who hoped to benefit from Heartland fundraising this year.

[Al_U_Card]

Yes indeed. The little engine that could.....except for the fake document that is.

 

Watts had a private donation of $44K steered to him to cover half of the cost of his project to make NASA climate information more accessible to non-academic users. He was hoping to find funding for the other half.

 

$88K, I wonder how much Greenpeace spends on toilet paper in a year....

 

As well as Gleick's Pacific institute getting about $100 MILLION from government sources! And their president is soon to be a convicted felon (we hope).

[PassedOut]

The effect of mankind's pouring billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere each year go beyond global warming and the resultant storms and flooding: Ocean Acidification Is Worse Than It’s Been for 300 Million Years

 

Human beings doing unprecedented things to the Earth, which is sort of impressive when you realize that the planet has existed for more than 4.5 billion years. But that’s what happens when 7 billion people produce and consume more and more stuff, emitting enormous amounts of gases like carbon dioxide and generally making of muck of things for everyone else.

 

Take the oceans. Researchers already know that the seas are becoming more acidic, thanks largely to the increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon. (Much of the carbon in the air is absorbed by the oceans—think of the fizz in a soda can—which over time makes them more acidic.)

No wonder the polluters don't want school children to learn the truth.

 

Reminds me of when the tobacco companies fought the truth about smoking. Some day the very polluters now denying that CO2 causes global warming will argue in court, as the cigarette companies did before them, "The harm we were doing was common knowledge for decades, so we are not responsible for what's happened."

[Al_U_Card]

Somehow, the journalist may have missed some of the other 1100 studies on ocean pH, magnitudes and effects...

 

Unless the fish are thinking about taking up smoking....I rather like smoked fish :blink:

 

Just some more info to debunk the alarmist rhetoric

 

0.1 pH as the next, greatest catastrophe

 

 

Many of the headlines forecasting “Death to Reefs” come from studies of ocean water at extreme pH’s that will never occur globally, and that are beyond even what the IPCC is forecasting. Some headlines come from studies of hydrothermal vents where CO2 bubbles up from the ocean floor. Not surprisingly they find changes to marine life near the vents, but then, the pH of these areas ranges right down to 2.8. They are an extreme environment, nothing like what we might expect to convert the worlds oceans too.

 

Marine life, quite happy about a bit more CO2?

Studies of growth, calcification, metabolism, fertility and survival show that, actually, if things were a little less alkaline, on average, marine life would benefit. There will be winners and losers, but on the whole, using those five measures of health, the reefs are more likely to have more life on and around them, than they are to shrink.

 

http://www.co2science.org/data/acidification/figures/Slide22.JPG

 

Figure 12. Percent change in the five measured life characteristics (calcification, metabolism, growth, fertility and survival) vs. decline of seawater pH from its present (control treatment) value to ending values extending up to the beginning pH value of "the warped world of the IPCC" for all individual data points falling within this pH decline range.

[neilkaz]

LOL a long thread on climate change B-).

 

All I can say is that I live well NW of Chicago where the temps are usually a couple degrees F colder. I am used to seeing day after day where sometimes it doesn't get above 10 F. Certainly a few nights every year get below 0F and sometimes worse than -10F.

 

Some years I have seen an entire month (ie Jan) NEVER get above freezing (almost to 32F but not above).

 

I've been here 20 years and this is by far the warmest winter I've ever seen. It has not been below zero F ever. Many days have had highs in the 40's and some 50's during the same period most years where we commonly get highs in the 20's F. We've had considerably less snow than other years as well.

 

I grew up in RI which is 6 or 7 degrees warmer in the winter than here on average and this Chicago area winter would be considered warm in RI.

 

This winter is more like what I'd expect if I lived well south like in Louisville. LOL the ground hardly ever even froze solid here this winter. From my observation this winter has been at least 10F warmer than average.

 

Climate change... :rolleyes: well I shudder to think summer could bring and allready a tornado has destroyed a town about 300 miles south of here. Of course a warm winter doesn't have to mean a hot summer.

 

Coincidence..I dunno, but I've never seen a winter this warm. .. neilkaz ..

[hrothgar]

 

Coincidence..I dunno, but I've never seen a winter this warm. .. neilkaz ..

 

 

And last year was brutally cold and snowy across much of the US...

 

Individual data points really aren't good for anything more than anecdotes.

Real analysis is based on long term trend

[Al_U_Card]

LOL a long thread on climate change B-).

 

All I can say is that I live well NW of Chicago where the temps are usually a couple degrees F colder. I am used to seeing day after day where sometimes it doesn't get above 10 F. Certainly a few nights every year get below 0F and sometimes worse than -10F.

 

Some years I have seen an entire month (ie Jan) NEVER get above freezing (almost to 32F but not above).

 

I've been here 20 years and this is by far the warmest winter I've ever seen. It has not been below zero F ever. Many days have had highs in the 40's and some 50's during the same period most years where we commonly get highs in the 20's F. We've had considerably less snow than other years as well.

 

I grew up in RI which is 6 or 7 degrees warmer in the winter than here on average and this Chicago area winter would be considered warm in RI.

 

This winter is more like what I'd expect if I lived well south like in Louisville. LOL the ground hardly ever even froze solid here this winter. From my observation this winter has been at least 10F warmer than average.

 

Climate change... :rolleyes: well I shudder to think summer could bring and allready a tornado has destroyed a town about 300 miles south of here. Of course a warm winter doesn't have to mean a hot summer.

 

Coincidence..I dunno, but I've never seen a winter this warm. .. neilkaz ..

 

And that is the nature of weather. Climate is longer term and if you google Arctic Oscillation and Blocking Highs you will get a clearer picture of why NA is warmer and Europe and Alaska are colder than usual this year, even though the "Global" temps have reached their most recent apex and are gradually cooling off as the PDO (Pacific Decadal Oscillation)shifts to its cold phase and the AMO (Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation) finishes its warm phase.

[neilkaz]

And last year was brutally cold and snowy across much of the US...

 

Individual data points really aren't good for anything more than anecdotes.

Real analysis is based on long term trend

 

Yes, of course and what matters is global average temperature, which unless, I'm missinformed or paying too much attention to those who think New York City will be under 30 ft of water in 100 years, is happening. Personally, I am not yet panicing about global warming and realize the big swings in temperature that we've had even over the past millennium.

 

.. neilkaz ..

[PassedOut]

Some recent news: Virginia Supreme Court Spanks Ken Cuccinelli

 

The state’s highest court wrote in an opinion that Cuccinelli lacked the authority to subpoena records — including e-mails, drafts and handwritten notes — from the University of Virginia involving well-known climate scientist Michael Mann’s research.

 

Mann, now a professor at Pennsylvania State University, accused the attorney general of engaging in a two-year “character assassination’’ against him. He just completed a book, “The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars,” about global-warming skeptics, including Cuccinelli, and what he calls their attacks on scientists.

Too bad about the waste of taxpayers' money by the Attorney General / Candidate for Governor, plus the $600,000 dollars the University of Virginia had to spend defending against a frivolous grab by a power-hungry politician.

[blackshoe]

In a reasonable world, Cuccinelli would have been required to repay the costs of his fishing expedition to both the State of Virginia and the University of Virginia.

[Al_U_Card]

That might depend on if he wants to pursue the pea under the thimble... either way, it is only a matter of time and more information before the sad truth about this scam is finally exposed.

 

Corporations are people until they don't want to be for litigation purposes

[PassedOut]

Review: The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines

 

I have been directly involved in the hockey stick war. I have been been an active research ecologist for over 20 years, and during the last 10 years I have focused on climate change and its effects on living systems. During part of my recent career, I was employed as science advisor to the Century Commission for a Sustainable Florida, a legislatively mandated commission. In March of 2007, while giving an invited report on climate change to a select committee of the Florida legislature, a conservative legislator rose from his seat and declared me to be a liar and demanded that I be dismissed. Indeed, I was asked to step from the podium. Only one newspaper in the state carried the story, and my employers, who were GOP appointees, did not so much as apologize for my treatment. Democracy in action, right?

 

My sin? I had shown the hockey stick. When I approached the legislator who had objected, I discovered that he did not know that the National Academy and reviewed Michael Mann's work and found it to be fundamentally sound. Indeed, it was not apparent that he even knew of the existence of the US National Academy. After the climate gate emails were released, the prestigious journal Nature referred to the push back from the oil soaked Irrational Right as a "street fight." I could not agree more.

 

I have carefully read and evaluated Mann's work and I find it to be of the highest standards of scientific integrity. He has been vindicated by numerous reviews. Despite continued harassment, he continues to find time to do excellent research. I have the greatest respect for him as a colleague and role model.

 

The story that Mann recounts in this book is horrific and indicative of the demise of our most cherished institutions. The primary strategy of the industry funded hacks who claim to be scientists is to attack the messenger. I recently spoke at a conference where one of these credentialed, unscrupulous scientists-for-hire began his talk by attacking the personal integrity of John Holdren, Ralph Cicerone, and Jane Lubchenco, all scientists who adhere to the highest standards of integrity. Later in his talk, this scoundrel showed slides of a crayfish and crab which had grown larger in acidified water. He used this as proof that ocean acidification was actually good for shelled organisms. The bald face lie in this is that these two organisms have chitinous exoskeletons, rather than calcarious shells. This is typical of the tactics that I have observed. It is a scorched-earth strategy to destroy the credibility of our most esteemed scientists and scientific establishments.

 

To date 32 national academies have endorsed the fundamental reality of human caused climate change. Numerous professional organizations have also made clear statements to support the mainstream science. 97% of all climate scientists agree. NSF, NASA, NOAA, USDA, the NPS, and the CDC have active research programs predicated on the reality of human-caused climate change. The clarity of the climate change threat could not be greater. It is most sobering to realize that our present emissions trajectory will result in a global average warming of over 5 degrees C by 2100. Such a planet will not sustain civilization in any recognizable form. The excess CO2 that is pumped into the air today will affect our planet for thousands of years into the future. I am not an alarmist, but I am alarmed. You should be too.

 

I urge everyone to read Mann's book. It is well written and compelling. Any publishing scientist who reads it will likely be chilled to the bone. I have contributed to the climate scientist legal defense fund, and urge all of you to do the same.

 

Stephen Mulkey, PhD

President, Unity College

Unity, ME 04988

Pretty much sums it up.

[Al_U_Card]

Some targets are soft, others are easy. This one is just sleazy.

 

I wasn't going to bother with Mann's book, as it is more than just a tissue of mis-representations, innuendo and outright falsehoods. It is the expression of delusion, fortified by the years of echo-chamber rhetoric and dirty-tricks. And they dare to call that climate "science". Maybe they should have called it...

 

Unconscionable.

[blackshoe]

There seems to be an awful lot of the pot calling the kettle black in this debate, on both sides. :ph34r:

[Winstonm]

http://healthandenergy.com/images/uncle%20sam%20and%20gwx9.gif

[Winstonm]

There seems to be an awful lot of the pot calling the kettle black in this debate, on both sides. :ph34r:

 

I'd say it's more like 3%, and it is one-sided.

 

97% of all climate scientists agree

 

Meanwhile, the wealthy, twisted, and powerful climate scientists are all conspiring - along with Dr. Evil - to rob the national wealth of all nations by way of research grants in a coordinated attack on helpless billion-dollar oil comapanies in order to make oil look dangerous and make Al Gore's green industry stock holdings go up in value.

 

I mean, really, how can you not believe that story? The facts are staring you right in the face. B-)

[Al_U_Card]

I'd say it's more like 3%, and it is one-sided.

 

I mean, really, how can you not believe that story? The facts are staring you right in the face. B-)

 

How many times does that "76 of 79 scientists that define themselves as dealing with climate" poll, that once you see the question relative to the poll, it is not relevent, at all, have to get dredged up?

 

How many bridges in Brooklyn would you buy? There really is one and it is for sale...

[Al_U_Card]

There seems to be an awful lot of the pot calling the kettle black in this debate, on both sides. :ph34r:

 

Rather, a small number of concerned individuals, on very limited budgets (as per the fraudster Dr. Peter Gleick of Heartland-gate fame) are slam-dunking the alarmists,(and their billions in funding) based on real data and factual studies. That is why governments (save Australia, which may well soon come to its senses) are bailing on the "catastrophic global warming" meme.

 

All the warmists can do is attack the messengers, use fraud and subterfuge to refute the reality and trump up evermore computer models to doom and gloom the world.

[kenberg]

I confess to not having the patience to try to follow all of this but Al, could you quickly summarize:

 

Do you think that the various scientific organizations that have accepted the work as scientifically valid have all been taken over by crooks or loonies?

 

Consider, but hopefully only briefly, the fight over evolution. Of course I am not prepared to debate a person who has spent his life gathering evidence and formulating arguments to prove evolution is a hoax. But the fact that I have neither the time nor the inclination to take on this load does not mean that I have to treat a 5000 year old universe as a plausible alternative.

 

Same here with global warming. Of course they will get some things wrong. That's science. Of course egos are involved and sometimes prevent a completely fair and open discussion.That's humanity. But I know people at Penn State. They would not hire Mann without some reason to believe his work, broadly speaking, holds up. I have known people in the National Academy. They are not inclined to jump on bandwagon fads. I have known scientists all of my adult life. They respect honest inquiry.

 

So yes, on evolution, on global warming, on many things that I lack time/skills/energy to investigate, I trust the scientific process. I guess that you don't? Is that fundamentally where we approach this differently?

[Al_U_Card]

Hey Ken.

 

I have been a scientist all my working life. Data accumulation and analysis got me started and led to the administration and management of other technical personnel. I have seen it all in a career of 35 years in industry.

 

Science is about scepticism. It is about data and the validation of hypotheses leading to theories that can be tested and refuted. It is not about two things. Belief and consensus.

 

Global warming belief is predicated on consensus. That consensus is not about determining what drives climate and how we might affect it. It is about the obtaining of funds and the advancement of an agenda that involves "saving" the world. Two very powerful motivators.

 

I was concerned by the rhetoric and felt dismayed that we were headed towards an avoidable future calamity, based on what I "heard" in the news and views of most people. Being sceptical in nature, I took a deeper look. For the last 5 years, everything I have seen and understood leads me to the conclusion that a lot of well-meaning people (scientists and others) have been taken in by their tendency to want to save the world. Others are just on the gravy train or even into self-aggrandizement through the propagation of their pronouncements.

 

I have seen enough to realize that [CO2] is not an issue nor a pollutant. (Pollution etc. is most definitely and worthy of attention.) Climate change is a natural phenomenon that we have affected in a small way by our presence but not in any way that is essentially detrimental to our lives or our way of life.

 

Agendas are taken up for many and various reasons. I cannot vouch for the positions of any of the supporters of catastrophism. I can only refer to the information at hand and that leads me to the conclusion that I espouse on this particular subject. Time will tell and based on the last couple of decades, it is telling us that [CO2] is not a culprit in anything. Why should we then spend our tax dollars on it when they can be used much more effectively in other areas?