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Comments 63801 to 63850:

  1. Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
    ...adding, that the problem with groups like Heartland is that they exploit the structures and values of civil society in order to dismantle civil society, just as anti-democratic groups rely on the values of pluralism and tolerance to advance an anti-democratic agenda. In both cases, the goal is to climb the ladder of democracy and free speech and then pull it up. As such, Heartland's activities aren't just dangerous to the environment; they're dangerous to the entire philosophical framework on which actually thoughtful bases his objections to "stealing." This self-canceling aspect of democracy, and the need for extralegal steps to preserve the law, has worried philosophers from Carl Schmitt to Jacques Derrida to Giorgio Agamben. I don't think we're going to settle that debate here, but I will say that I'd prefer to have illegal law-preserving steps taken by private citizens than by governments, for the simple reason that they can bring about needed change without making law itself seem totally arbitrary. Of course, it would be preferable to have transparency and other legal rules that limit the power of groups like Heartland. But unfortunately, the more groups like Heartland make such rules necessary, the more power they have to prevent them from being enacted or enforced. It'd be great if things never got to that point. Unfortunately, they have, which leaves us with a range of options running from worst to least bad. As I see it, an objection to leaks in this climate actually undermines the moral standards it attempts to invoke. Like it or not, this is one of the ways societies advance. In some cases, it may be the only way they advance. Or at least, the only nonviolent way.
  2. Fritz Vahrenholt - Duped on Climate Change
    That's silly elsa - you're playing semantic games. AGW is inherently testable since it's straightforward to compare observations/measurements with theory. We can take a vast amount of information on all of the contributions to the earth's energy balance (solar, volcanic, aerosolic, black carbon, greenhouse gas from CO2, methane, nitrous oxides, tropospheric ozone and so on) and define attributions to (say) 20th century and contemporary warming. Either the observations are consistent with the (theoretical) attributions or they aren't. It turns out that observations are entirely consisitent with a dominant contribution from anthropogenic greenhouse forcing. Without this contribution, there should have been no significant warming during the 20th century. Actually, I would modify Dikran's description of how science "works" (perhaps because I'm fundamentally an experimentalist!). I'd say it's: (i) perform experiments/observations (ii) formulate a theory (iii) devise and perform experiments/observations to test the theory (iv) compare results with predictions... (v) refine or abandon theory... (vi) repeat steps (iii-(vi) (i.e. I'm not sure how one conjures theories out of thin air in the absence of observations - 'though that may be due to my deficiencies as an experimentalist!).
  3. Fritz Vahrenholt - Duped on Climate Change
    CBDunkerson: while I can understand a relationship between two variables might be statistically significant I do not see how you could make the statement that the trend in temperature is so. Your view seems to me much more like what Karl Popper called historicism, an apparent ability to forecast certain "inevitable" trends. As he put it for historicists "the way is not only long, but winding, leading up and down, right and left." As a result pretty much every set of circumstances will fit with the theory. A prolonged period without warming, or even some decline, must be just part of the "noise" or the road leading up and down, a deviation from an inevitably warmer destiny.
  4. Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
    How sure are people that this is real? Seems real but still little to confirm it.
  5. Fritz Vahrenholt - Duped on Climate Change
    elsa wrote: "But we cannot take step (i) in your process." Well, this explains why 'skeptics' don't have any alternative explanation fitting the observed facts... they are actually incapable of formulating new theories. Who knew? Martin, you're forgiven. :]
  6. Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
    One possible wedge is Indur, who is a DOE employee. Has he declared this payment on his COI forms?
  7. A prelude to the Arctic melting season
    January 2012 (GISS) is out. Gives an idea as to why the ice is in such a sorry state: [Source]
  8. Fritz Vahrenholt - Duped on Climate Change
    Dikran. You say the way science works is: (i) formulating an theory (ii) perform experiment/observations (iii) compare results with prediction from theory (iv) refine or abandon theory according to comparison (v) repeat steps (ii)-(v) But we cannot take step (i) in your process. We have no starting point for the relationship between eg CO2 and temperature other than the ones we derive from step (iv)and those are completely mixed up with the other factors that influence temperature. All we can do is use (iv) as a starting point, which really amounts to assuming that the theory is correct and adjusting the other factors to make it work where it doesn't. Using such a technique does not make the AGW theory wrong, but it does render it untestable in any meaningful way.
  9. Fritz Vahrenholt - Duped on Climate Change
    CBDunkerson#30 Sorry, I didn't find the post on 'Sun upside down' the first time a looked because I included the quotation marks. Silly me.
  10. Fritz Vahrenholt - Duped on Climate Change
    muoncounter#31 I think you should have a look at Kirkby's presentation on youtube. Kirkby doesn't claim that cosmic rays lead to increases in cloud cover. He is quite candid that the current research on the correlation between the two is inconclusive. Although, he does believe that it is quite possible that CRs might possibly affect certain types of clouds in certain parts of the atmosphere. He states quite clearly that he hasn't yet shown how cloud condensation nuclei are created. That is next on his list of todos. He does claim that because UV is neglected as an input in climate models, the sign for solar irradiance forcing is wrong. If you would like to think of Kirkby as a sceptic it might be more because of what he thinks is poorly understood - how aerosols influence cloud formation - and that he thinks this might have a large effect (comparable to CO2) on the global temperature. He is careful not to make any unsubstantiated claims. He does point out to quite a bit of research which he believes has the potential of significantly changing our assessment of the effect the sun has on climate. In short Kirkby does not believe that the "science is settled" and he hopes to be able to make a significant contribution in the near future. I haven't found anything concerning the UV light and an inversion of the sign for solar irradiance forcing on this site.
  11. Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
    Excellent article at the Huffington Post about the "Heartless" Institute.
  12. Fritz Vahrenholt - Duped on Climate Change
    @31 and 32- thanks- the article by Jeffrey Pierce at Real Climate was particularly helpful-a balanced response that was still supportive of the research being done with CLOUD at CERN.
  13. Dikran Marsupial at 03:17 AM on 16 February 2012
    Fritz Vahrenholt - Duped on Climate Change
    CLOUD is also a good rebuttal of the argument that skeptics can't get funding for their research. It is a *big* project by anybody's standard. CLOUD obviously made a good scientific case for their project, however if all projects ended up confirming their experimental hypothesis it would be an indication that there is something very wrong with the funding mechansim. I'd be very surprised if CLOUD provides a genuinely useful basis for climate skepticism, rather than "just" a useful incremental advance in our understanding of cloud nucleation, but it would be a surprise I would definitely welcome!
  14. Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
    AT, realize the first line of defense from the deniers will be "what happened to your pious, sanctimonious drivel about stolen documents". So what? If they didn't use that defense, they'd use another, equally obnoxious and aggressive one. That's what they do. Arguably, that's all they do. The defense, obviously, is that it wasn't "pious, sanctimonious drivel." It was legitimate anger at the use of stolen emails to advance a false argument, demonize honest people and enrich a redundantly wealthy industry. Also, given the accusations Heartland routinely makes against people like me -- which include genocide -- sanctimony barely registers. This is a moment that we will learn something about ourselves (and indeed at the current ratio of 17:1 we now know). Someone who can't or won't acknowledge the difference between leaked documents that reveal a fully conscious campaign of deceit -- one that targets schoolchildren, for God's sake -- and a bunch of stolen emails that reveal no such thing is not someone I want advising me on ethics, thanks. Rationalizing that this is for the good of humanity (which I happen to agree with) makes us feel better. Yes, as it should. Because as you yourself acknowledge, it actually is for the good of humanity. Which is why it is not, in fact, a rationalization but a justification. At a minimum, it would behoove us to acknowledge we are ceding that portion of the high ground. Self awareness is a valuable asset. The moral high ground here is a) not lying about climate science; and b) putting the planet and humanity before the corporate bottom line. No one here has ceded either position. Rather, these positions have informed their reaction to this leak, just as one would expect and want them to. What would you prefer us to do? Pretend this material doesn't exist? Refuse to use it as evidence? Begin every discussion of it with some anodyne disclaimer to the effect that "stealing is wrong, but...." What is the practical outcome you'd like to see? Had the stolen CRU emails actually supported the denialists' allegations of a global conspiracy to falsify evidence, the same points I'm making here would apply. But they didn't, and the people who stole them and misrepresented their content knew they didn't. Do you also feel that the antiwar movement ceded the moral high ground by supporting Daniel Ellsberg's "theft" of the Pentagon Papers? Or by using information obtained from them for political purposes? Is it ever morally acceptable to "steal" information, in your view, or do property rights always trump human life (or at least counterbalance it)? as the core issue is that these documents were obtained against the will of the document owners Yep. And climate science has been rendered "controversial" in classrooms against the will of teachers and administrators. For years, and for money. An ethics that draws no real distinction between these wrongs is not a useful, realistic or "actually thoughtful" one, in my view. Ultimately, the conflict here isn't between ethical and unethical behavior; it's between obedience to law and obedience to justice (as it usually is in whistleblowing cases). If Heartland has a legal case, they can take legal action. Presumably, that's a risk the leaker consciously chose to take. Whether that should or will happen is a completely separate issue from whether the leaked information should be used here in defense of science. Obviously, it should. Failing to do so would be immoral.
  15. Fritz Vahrenholt - Duped on Climate Change
    Martin#25: "he is wrong because ..." If the past is a guide, whatever Dr. Kirkby publishes will be immediately embraced by the 'anything but CO2' crowd. The cosmic ray threads here and here are excellent rebuttals to the entire idea of a cosmic ray-climate connection, but I'm sure we'll need to go through that all over again. If you don't like any of our threads, here's another excellent summary. The single largest hole in the connection is the Laschamp geomagnetic minimum, a time of high cosmic ray flux at the surface with no change in climate. Other reasons he is wrong are in RC's discussion of the difficulties inherent in the cloud nucleation model.
  16. Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
    andylee - I suppose I was thinking about something on the level of Watt's surfacestations website - which is slightly above blog level. That shouldn't cost much. If you're doing a more interactive website, dealing with databases, transactions, or money, costs will be much higher. And if you need 24/7 access, or have loads that require multiple servers, etc. But I can't forsee anything from Watts and company that would hit that level.
  17. Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
    KR, $88k for a decent website is significant, but not an "awful lot". It depends on how many man-years would be involved. The last site I worked on as CTO (and took over) took $1.5m to build, required a team of 20 programmers in 4 countries with multiple redundant servers etc. However, no amount of money would entice me to build a site that compromised my values.
  18. Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
    As of this morning I see 32 articles on Google News, including one from Forbes.
  19. Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
    Primus - I believe most people realized what groups like Heartland were up to, and now there's proof. I think this may be a very significant story. I think I would tend to agree with some of the speculation here - that Idso (as a fairly minor public figure) may be acting as a distribution hub, that Singer isn't giving Heartland much bang for the buck. And that $88k to Anthony Watts is an awful lot for setting up a website! Hmmm... The person referred to in the documents as "The Anonymous Donor" is fascinating: roughly $15M US given by a single donor to lobby against acting on climate change?!? I wonder who that is. Secundus - I'm greatly encouraged by the discussion here, with actual consideration of the ethics of disclosures. I somehow don't recall anyone in the 'skeptic' groups being upset over email hacking. Moral high ground, anyone? That said - whistleblowing is a time-honored tradition when a person of ethics feels that an entity (company, government, etc) is acting in an illegal or immoral fashion.
  20. Fritz Vahrenholt - Duped on Climate Change
    Martin & jimb, I haven't watched the video but the descriptions sound like things which have been covered here many times before. Use the search box at the upper left to find articles on 'Kirkby', 'Cosmic Rays', 'CERN', and/or 'sun upside down' to find discussions of these issues.
  21. Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
    Anyone that threatens everyone's futures by corrupting the truth for the sake of selfish short-term gain is as unscrupulous and as low as a spammer in my opinion. I hope this will get as much media coverage as "Climategate" did, expose the nastiness and make Denialism as socially unacceptable and unfashionable as drink driving. I'm sure we would all like to know who is this anonymous donor, and their motives, because it certainly isn't about truth.
  22. Fritz Vahrenholt - Duped on Climate Change
    re my post @17, I'm with Martin @25in hoping that someone here can add some analysis that I am not capable of doing. I would also note that in the presentation Dr. Kirkby said that there was a paper in the works and that there was further discussion of the implications coming. So far I have found no reference here to that paper-I expect it may be still going through the peer review process.
  23. Dikran Marsupial at 01:52 AM on 16 February 2012
    Fritz Vahrenholt - Duped on Climate Change
    Sorry elsa, there is no inconsistency, but instead an aspects of climate and climate modelling that you are unaware of. Please read the paper by Easterling and Wehner (2009) which show that similar periods of little or no warming ocurr now and then in both the observational data and in model output. If you understand the difference between forced and unforced climate you will understand that the observation of a decade or to with little or no warming is completely consistent with prolonged warming (the acceleration will not be very evident on a decadal basis due to the noise involved). The idea that AGW theory is not falsifiable is obviously incorrect. For instance if the climate were to cool for the next fifty years, in the absence of changes in the forcings, that is something that is impossible according to the models and the theory and hence would falsify both. AGW theory hasn't been falsified yet, but that doesn't mean that it cannot be falsified. "Now you could well be right [sulphate aerosols being responsible for 1940-70 trend] that this is the explanation but once you have added the extra variables you have a theory that will be right whatever happens and thus loses its claim to be properly scientific." This is simply nonsense. The way science works is by (i) formulating an theory (ii) perform experiment/observations (iii) compare results with prediction from theory (iv) refine or abandon theory according to comparison (v) repeat steps (ii)-(v) There has been much work done on understanding the physics of atmospheric aerosols, they weren't added to the models as a post-hoc fix without justification. There is a good reason that the 1940-1970 trend is not taken as a repudiation of the theory, which is because it is compatible with the theory. If you want an example of a claim being not properly scientific, then just look at claims that climate change is due to climate cycles. How many of them have made a falsifiable prediction based on a physical (rather then phenomonological) model. I think you will find the answer is approximately zero.
  24. Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
    Well, that's hit the papers here in Oz! http://www.theage.com.au/environment/climate-change/scientist-accepts-cash-for-climate-20120215-1t7ho.html Oh, and since John Brookes asked: http://www.ipa.org.au/people/bob-carter
  25. Fritz Vahrenholt - Duped on Climate Change
    Dikran: as I hope I make clear above my main point here was that there is an inconsistency between the graph presented above and many of the temperature measures for the last decade (as you yourself have accepted on the other blog as far as surface temperature is concerned). I would not argue the last decade is particularly significant, although it is difficult to square it with the view that the world faces accelerating warming. Equally I would not see any great significance in the temperature trends of the last century or so. The world is a bit warmer but whether that is a lasting feature is not something you or I can know with any certainty, still less whether it has been caused by humans and CO2. You state that your hypothesis should always be what you want to disprove. I think we would agree therefore that to have a truly scientific hypothesis there should exist circumstances which would be capable of proving the theory wrong. But in the case of the AGW theory this is not the case. The world cooled in the period 1940 to 1970 or so (a 30 year period which you seem to regard as a significant timespan) while CO2 concentrations rose. But this is not taken as repudiating the theory, which is rescued by "a highly likely ...identifiable change in the forcing". Now you could well be right that this is the explanation but once you have added the extra variables you have a theory that will be right whatever happens and thus loses its claim to be properly scientific.
  26. Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
    I was out of the loop a lot yesteday so I just learned this news now. I haven't had a chance to read all the comments on this and hope I'm not repeating something here. There's a critical element to the clamor about the publicly-funded scientists' emails being made public (Climategate, Cucinelli's witchhunt, etc.) and this event that needs to be addressed. It's one thing to engage in junk science (e.g., NIPCC) at the behest of your anonymous donors, but to start a well-funded campaign that deliberately intends to change public education is an invitation to public sctrutiny at the same level of the work of public officials. A good example of this in these documents is, buried in the budget (p.20) is a tie in with ALEC -- the American Legislative Exchange Council -- a secretive organization funded by private corporations that, among other things, writes "model legislation" that is typically introduced verbatim by friendly legislators in U.S. state legislatures to engage in such "reforms" as privatizing public schools and prisons (guess who gets paid to operate them?), among many other proposals that have the direct effect of increasing corporate revenues. One Florida legislator recently introduced an ALEC bill and forgot to remove the reference that it was written by ALEC in the text. Ooops. If word really got out, Americans would be shocked to learn that corporations -- not the people they elect -- are actually writing their laws. The New York Times recently ran an editorial on ALEC's activities, but the group still operates largely under the radar. You can learn more about ALEC here: http://alecexposed.org/wiki/ALEC_Exposed There is so much in these documents that demonstates that Heartland is not about science but rather corporate influence. I challenge any deniers who attack individual climate scientists as "leftist" or "environmentalists" with an "agenda" to explain how the relationship between Heartland, its paid consultants, and groups like ALEC should not also make Heartland's work suspect.
  27. Fritz Vahrenholt - Duped on Climate Change
    elsa wrote: "The escalator starting at a convenient point in time" Again, this is nonsense. Pick any starting point in the thermometer temperature record that you like... it changes nothing. 1940? Guess what, the total trend is upwards. 1910? Upward trend there too. 1880? Same thing. The only way you can get a 'non warming' trend up to the present is to pick a starting point so recent that the result is statistically meaningless. Every statistically significant trend up to present shows warming. All of them. What could possibly possess you to keep making such a patently ridiculous claim?
  28. Fritz Vahrenholt - Duped on Climate Change
    Listened to Jasper Kirkby's talk (given 9 months ago). Very interesting, that bit about the effects of the sun's UV light. I find it rather frustrating that my limited understanding of climate science does not allow me to comment in a meaningful way, i.e. "He is right because ... or he is wrong because ...". Perhaps the climate experts at skepticalscience can help me out and post a comment or something? Cheers, Martin
  29. Fritz Vahrenholt - Duped on Climate Change
    CBDunkerson: The "denialists" described here use a selected period (or several) to "prove" that warming has stopped or gone into reverse. The escalator starting at a convenient point in time from its own perspective does likewise to "prove" that there is an irreversible rising trend. Nothing you say above contradicts this view, and I note that you do not question my statement that the trend has been flat over the last decade although the graph with this post shows an increase (this was really my question/criticism in this blog and potentially a good example of the statistical chicanery to which you refer, having been "adjusted" in an unspecified way to produce the desired result and without displaying the unadjusted graph that might cause the outsider to question the validity of the adjusted one.)
  30. Dikran Marsupial at 00:50 AM on 16 February 2012
    Fritz Vahrenholt - Duped on Climate Change
    Elsa, climatology is chiefly interested in the response of the climate to changes in the forcings, and is less interested in the unforced response of the climate (i.e. weather) as the former is useful for making projections and the latter is not (as it averages out in the long term - e.g. 30 years or so). The levelling off from the 40s to early 70s is highly likely to be due to an identifiable change in the forcings (in this case suphate aerosols) so it is not comparable with the current decade, where there is no good evidence that there has been a change in forcings that could be responsible. Instead the explanation is likely to be the same unforced climate variability that allows an escalator to be drawn. Now as it happens there isn't even statistically significant evidence that the underlying trend has actually fallen. This suggests it is likely to be merely an artifact of the noise. So, if you want to argue that the most recent decadal trend is meaningful you need to do two things: (i) demonstrate that there has been a statistically significant change in the trend (remember your null hypothesis always should be what you want to disprove) and (ii) that it is the result of a change in the focings and hence likely to persist or (iii) show that there is a physical mechanism by which some long term cycle is not merely correlated, but can also explain the strength of effect. The bottom line is that decadal trends tell you very very little about how the climate is behaving and are essentially meaningless sorry about the shouting
  31. Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
    It's being reported by the Guardian newspaper in the UK now: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/15/leak-exposes-heartland-institute-climate
  32. Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
    This is funny. I mean we all knew what was happening, but details make it much more interesting. Is there anything connecting Heartland with Australian skeptical bloggers? Maybe through the Institute of Public Affairs...
  33. The Year After McLean - A Review of 2011 Global Temperatures
    Ken #34: "Problem is that for other experts such as Dr Trenberth - neither exist!" Ken #36: "Dr Trenberth has commented that the Asian aerosols *effect* is insignificant" Do I need to explain the difference between insignificant (which may also be an exaggeration Trenberth's position) and non existant?
  34. Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
    Update: Up to 16 articles now, and the Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that Carter had confirmed he is receiving payments from Heartland. Lloyd, you are correct in terms of pure philosophy... but in real world applicability the difference between 'prejudice' and 'insight' is highly subjective. In most cases our only guide to judging the inner mind of others comes down to end results.
  35. Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
    @62/Pete Dunkelberg - non-profits are not completely barred from political activity, if the term is broadly defined. I'm on the board of a local non-profit, the issue comes up. One does have to be careful, however -- there's stuff you can't do. Some of what you cannot do depends on how the non-profit was incorporated (as in, actual word choices made by lawyers on the paperwork when you apply for your 501c(3)). Without knowing all the details (and I haven't read anything beyond what's here) it could easily be legit-enough.
  36. The Year After McLean - A Review of 2011 Global Temperatures
    CBD #35 Forgive my shorthand. Would 'Jim Hansen's Asian aerosols *effect*' as with his 'delayed Pinitubo rebound effect' explain it better? Dr Trenberth has commented that the Asian aerosols *effect* is insignificant in explaining the stasis in surface temperatures and the discrepancy in warming imbalance. There is such a quotation on this site which I have had no time to find - might be in the 'Trenberth on tracking Earth's energ...' or similar thread. As for the Pinitubo rebound effect - that is a Hansen special (maybe an idea of his brainy grandchild) upon which no one will comment fearing it will diminish Hansen's credibility.
  37. Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
    CBDunkerson, I think recklessness is still culpable even if you luck out. If you suspect someone of wrongdoing but you have little real evidence for it, and you do something that is an invasion of privacy and happen to expose actual wrondoing I think you should still be punisheed for a reckless invasion of privacy. It's like the idea of probable cause when law enforcement seeks a search warrant. The intrusion of the search is inherently undesirable and can only be justified by strong suspicion with objective justification. The CRU email affar would still have been culpable even if they had turned up evidence of wrongdoing since the only thing that they had to justify the hack was their prejudices.
  38. Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
    dorlomin, well... it becomes somewhat difficult for Revkin to continue claiming that suggestions of a degree of 'skeptic' bias on his part are all in the minds of 'AGW extremists' (not his terminology, but the implication) when even Heartland agrees he is somewhat 'on their side'. Hey, look at that... 'deniers' and 'alarmists' find common ground. Peace on Earth. Good will to all. :]
  39. Fritz Vahrenholt - Duped on Climate Change
    elsa wrote: "While they can be criticised for picking flat periods to suit themselves the escalator itself picks a rather suitable start from its own point of view and conveniently leaves out the years from say 1940 to 1970." This is, obviously, nonsense. The point of the escalator graphic is to show that various 'no warming for the past years' claims are statistical chicanery. Extending the graphic back before the start of significant GHG warming (as you suggest) would in no way change that fact. Indeed, additional 'flat' or 'cooling' periods of ~10 years could be added and the trend line of the total period would still be upwards. Ditto if we went back to 1900 and included the early 20th century (mostly) solar warming. Those two 'pre significant GHG warming' periods do not change the statistical facts being demonstrated by the escalator. Put another way... there is not any year in the thermometer temperature records which shows a statistically significant 'flat' or 'cooling' trend up to present. The only way you can get such a claim of 'warming has stopped' is by using a period too short to reach 95% statistical significance.
  40. Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
    I dont think Revkin has anything he needs to address.
  41. Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
    I would think that it would be important to Revkin to address this right away.
  42. Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
    As of now Google news is showing a grand total of 11 articles on this subject... most of them on clearly 'left wing' sites and/or blogs. This lackluster reaction might be put down to the authenticity of the documents not being proven (which is probably the most important thing to get nailed down at this point), but then there were hundreds of articles, including in the mainstream news sections of major papers, before the CRU e-mails were verified. It is still possible that this count will grow and word of these issues reach beyond the realm of people who closely follow the 'climate wars' to the general public, but I think the fact that it hasn't already shows that we are up against more than 'just' a 'false balance' problem with much of the global media. As to the ethical hand-wringing... frankly I always found the 'but it was hacking' angle on the CRU e-mails somewhat over-wrought. Had the e-mails shown actual wrongdoing I'd have had no problem with them being hacked and released. Any law which makes it illegal to expose unethical, immoral, or illegal behavior by someone else is inherently flawed and should be ignored when necessary. That said, if you only think someone is doing bad things and turn out to be wrong it is then perfectly appropriate to be arrested for it. In this case we have the Heartland Institute receiving 501(c)(3) tax exempt status while possibly violating the limitations against political activity and lobbying required for that status. Even if they managed to stay within the law there (which seems unlikely to me if the documents are authentic) the documents still show clear ethical and moral lapses which more than validate action by any internal whistleblower or (IMO) external hacker. The law is a blunt instrument. In order to protect legitimate privacy concerns we establish laws worded so broadly that they end up also preventing the exposure of corruption. If that flawed structure is not challenged then the corruption is allowed to flourish and grow unchecked... a harm potentially as great as the one the law was meant to protect. This is an eternal conflict which has usually been solved by allowing exceptions or minimizing penalties for violations of the law which expose such corruption.
  43. Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
    On a side note, I am not a fan of the leakage of the internal communications of the US State Department by Manning, through WikiLeaks: - I don't see that we learned anything important - It did expose confidential positions that embarrassed US negotiations with other countries - It did expose US operations and personnel
  44. Fritz Vahrenholt - Duped on Climate Change
    DSL, the decade I picked was simply the most recent one (and the reason for this was that it was the one under debate in the other blog). My point in mentioning it here is that the temperature record for that decade, which seems flat, does not fit with the one shown here which shows an increase. I have not spent much time looking at the various data but I suspect the temperature record was flat for the period because the group defending the AGW position in the other blog worded their comment very carefully so as not to be specific about what had actually happened in the decade. It would have been easy enough for them to say that "the" temperature increased in the period as well as the obvious thing to say, but they did not do so, probably because they would have been incorrect if they had. So the question remains as to how the graph here shows an increase in the last ten years which, at least as far as the surface temperature is concerned, did not take place. The explanation offered here seems to be that the data on this blog has been "adjusted" that is to say it is not the actual mean global temperature as recorded but a graph of what the global temperature might have been if certain volcanic and other events had not happened. Now that may well be an interesting series to look at and the events may well provide an explanation for the lack of warming at a time when the basic AGW view suggests that the world should have been warming at an accelerating rate. But the fact that it is an adjusted series perhaps should be emphasised and perhaps the unadjusted figures should be there too so that disinterested observers could form a balanced view.
  45. Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
    On the ethics of using leaked documents: - I believe that what broke the back of the "cigarettes don't cause lung cancer" denialism was the leakage of papers from the Tobacco Institute by an employee of Brown & Williamson. - What blew the covers off the Vietnam War was the leakage of the "Pentagon papers" of the RAND Corporation by Daniel Ellsberg. If validated, I believe that these "denialgate" papers are a worthy modern example of the genre.
  46. Pete Dunkelberg at 23:23 PM on 15 February 2012
    Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
    I just have time for a quick note this morning. A comment on the first page says Heartland is doing nothing illegal. This is in doubt, due to their political activity and tax exempt status.
  47. Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
    Tom, I think they are so self righteous that it never occured to them that they might be the target of whistleblowing. From most of the accounts that I have seen, the typical whistleblower is not a radical or a rebel but a principled supporter of the system trying to force the system to live up to its claimed ideals. I would expect this to be so here.
  48. Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
    Curiously, if you google search [site:heartland.org whistleblower] you get 173 hits, many of them dealing with EPA whistleblowing, so there is not question that they support whistleblowing , so long as they are not the targets. On the other hand, google searching [site:heartland.org "whistleblower policy"] brings up nothing, so it appears they don't want their whistleblower policy known.
  49. Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
    I had some reservations about this, centering about betrayal of trust. Buth then I realized, they have implicitly given permission for this. They laud whistleblowers. They want to see the CRU hack as being whistleblowing by a disgusted insider. While this does seem to be at variance with reality it does mean that I don't think they can justifiably complain if they are made to look bad by a whistleblower. I am as susceptible to rationalization as anyone else but I do do try hard to fight this. I think I suicceed most of the time. I am trying to fight the temptation to rationalize right now but I do believe that the argument that I just gave is valid.
  50. Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
    As far as Whistleblowing is concerned, I would refer you to the included "2010_IRS_Form_990.pdf" Page 9 of the PDF, but page 6 of the 990: 13: Does the Organization have a written Whistleblower Policy. X (Yes) I think that would suggest the whistleblower is protected by law, and is aware of the contents of the policy. Agree that this does not appear to be theft from outside the organisation which differentiates it from the CRU hack. Andrew.

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