Tag Archives: Climate Change

Right Wing Coalition to Attack Windmills

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… and it is starting to look like they are mainly tilting at windmills, but still:

Confidential memo seen by Guardian calls for climate change sceptics to turn American public against solar and wind power…

A network of ultra-conservative groups is ramping up an offensive on multiple fronts to turn the American public against wind farms and Barack Obama’s energy agenda….

A number of rightwing organisations, including Americans for Prosperity, which is funded by the billionaire Koch brothers, are attacking Obama for his support for solar and wind power. The American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), which also has financial links to the Kochs, has drafted bills to overturn state laws promoting wind energy.

Why. WHY?????

Here’s the story at the Guardian.

Advertiser walks away from anti-science Heartland

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This just in:

Diageo announces it is to end funding of Heartland Institute
Diageo, one the world’s largest drinks companies, has announced it will no longer fund the Heartland Institute, a rightwing US thinktank which briefly ran a billboard campaign this week comparing people concerned about climate change to mass murderers and terrorists, such as Osama bin Laden, Charles Manson and Ted Kaczynski.

On Thursday, a billboard appeared over the Eisenhower Expressway in Illinois showing a picture of Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber who in 1996 was convicted of a 17-year mail bombing campaign that killed three people and injured dozens. The caption read: “I still believe in global warming. Do you?” A day later it was withdrawn.

Global Warming is the Real Thing, but "Global Warming" is not the real problem

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As is the case with most things that are important, we as a society have done a very bad job of developing an effective conversation about Global Warming. The vast majority of electronic and real ink that I see spent on the discussion of Global Warming (outside of the peer reviewed literature) is not even about climate or climate change. Rather, it is about talking about climate change, the politics of climate change, critique of the rhetoric about climate change, clarification, obfuscation, complaining, accusing, yelling or belly-aching, and the occasional threat of violence. And today, dear reader, I’d like to give you some more of that! (Well, some of it. There will be no threats!)

Continue reading Global Warming is the Real Thing, but "Global Warming" is not the real problem →

Climate "Controversy" in American Classrooms

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PBS has something coming out tonight about teaching climate change in American Classrooms.

From a press release I just got in the mail:

The PBS NEWSHOUR examines the struggle over teaching climate change Wednesday

The PBS NewsHour’s Hari Sreenivasan will report Wednesday (May 2) on how the controversy over climate change affects America’s classrooms. Part of a NewsHour series on the impacts of climate change, Sreenivasan’s piece takes a look at a political think tank creating climate change curriculum, examines recent state laws dictating what can be taught about global warming and profiles a Colorado science teacher who faced a student/parent rebellion in her classroom over the issue.

“They hear it on the news, they see it in the newspaper, and they hear their parents talking about it” science teacher Cheryl Manning explains in tonight’s segment. “There are people who say the climate may be changing but it’s not our fault, or the climate isn’t changing at all. This is a natural cycle; there are all sorts of things that the kids hear. They want clarification.”

There is more information here.

Michael Mann on Climate Scientists and Smear Campaigns

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Climate scientist Michael Mann is no stranger to smear campaigns. Man has the distinction of having made important contributions to climate science, for which he shared the Nobel Peace Prize. He is famous to many of you for having come up with the “hockey stick” metaphor.

Michael Mann is a good scientist who has done honest, important, and high quality work, but there are those who don’t want to hear about the results he and other climate scientists have come up with. So, they hate him. And by “hate” I don’t mean that they sit there not liking him. I mean, they actively hate him. They wake up every morning and try to think of things to do to ruin his life, and they conspire with each other to carry out these nefarious acts, and in some cases, they are paid by special interests to do these things.

We all get this hate, to one level or another. I was amused the other day when one of the haters, someone who had made death threats against me, had apparently pressed the button on his Linked In account to “find people to link to” and thus accidentally sent me an invitation to “Link In.” I get an email that says “I want to kill you” then I get an invitation to link up. Made me laugh.

But in reality this is no laughing matter. Even though we all take a certain amount of crap for either being a climate scientist or a person who teaches about climate change or a blogger or journalist who covers these issues honestly and critically, no one has taken the crap that Michael Mann has had to take. I don’t know how he does it.

Anyway, Michael has written a commentary for CNN that covers not so much the attacks on him, but rather, the attacks on climate science more generally. He talks about the theft of emails and subsequent dissemination and misuse of their contents and related events:

In the most infamous episode, somebody stole thousands of e-mails and documents from leading climate researchers, including me. They cherry picked key phrases from the e-mails and published them out of context, like a black-and-white political attack ad with ominous music. Fossil fuel industry-funded groups gleefully spread the e-mails online and badgered the mainstream media into covering the “controversy” they had manufactured.

It was no accident that this happened on the eve of a major international climate change meeting. … The dozen independent investigations that did follow — all of which exonerated the scientists — got much less media coverage than the original nonscandal.

Go read his essay. Also, please, please check out the comment section and say something not horrible there to help diffuse the crap that I’m sure is going to appear there over the next few days!

Michael Mann is the author of The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines.

The Demise of Climate Denialist and Fake Nobel Laureate/British Royal Christopher Monkton

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Potholer54 has written a letter to Monkton that you will want to read, and he’s also made a video that you will want to see. First the letter (from here):

Continue reading The Demise of Climate Denialist and Fake Nobel Laureate/British Royal Christopher Monkton →

Climate Science Denial at Carleton University: A Detailed Take-Down

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A report detailing an audit of a course called “Climate Change: An Earth Sciences Perspective” (ERTH 2402), taught at Carleton University, has been compiled by a team of concerned individuals and was released a few minutes ago. From the report:
Continue reading Climate Science Denial at Carleton University: A Detailed Take-Down →

Court To Hear CO2 Arguments

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The EPA made what is called an “endangerment finding” a while back which asserts that it is appropriate to regulate the release of greenhouse gasses. This was challenged in court by science deinialists and energy interests via “the state of Virginia, the industry front-group Coalition for Responsible Regulation, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the Tea Party-industry front Southeastern Legal Foundation.”

Brad Johnson has a post outlining the situation here.

The endangerment finding is based on a large and internally consist ant corpus of scientific findings. The argument against the finding is in conflict with what we know from a scientific perspective, and is rather self serving for the interests involved.

Is the Heartland "Strategy Memo" a Fake? Let's try using science!

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As you know, there is much discussion about whether or not a “strategy memo” leaked from the Heartland Institute is a fake. We are told by a trustworthy source that this policy memo was leaked to him, and that he then tricked the Heartland Institute to supply him with additional documents, which he then used to verify the “strategy memo” based on cross reference of factual information. Only after the apparent veracity of the memo was determined did that individual, Peter Gleick, release all of the documents to the public.

Subsequently, a number of untrustworthy sources, such as Heartland related people and the usual gaggle of Science Haters, have insisted that the original strategy memo is a fake. One set of evidence used to suggest this is that the memo was different from the other documents in several ways: It was a photocopy or a fax with different formatting, etc. This of course is evidence of nothing. There is nothing that requires that all of the documents associated with a particular institution, or even a particular event such as a board meeting at an institution, be created, formatted, and distributed with the same look, feel, and technology. It it obvious to me that if this is the case of Heartland getting caught red handed, they might then be grasping at straws.

However, we can use science to address this question further, and this is exactly what Shawn Otto has done. In a piece posted moments ago (here and soon to be at Huffington Post) Shawn carries out an analysis using a standard and widely respected software system to compare a sample of Gleick’s writing, some samples from Heartland, and the “strategy memo.” In this analysis, the memo is entered as an unknown, and the software shows the difference between that unknown document and the known document. Read Shawn’s analysis to see the details; the conclusion is that the strategy memo was more likely written in house at Heartland than by Peter Gleick.
Continue reading Is the Heartland "Strategy Memo" a Fake? Let's try using science! →

"Faked" Heartland Institute Doc is Authentic

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You know about the Heartland Strategy memo. It is one of several documents produced and used internally by the Heartland Institute, a minor Libertarian “Think” Tank, demonstrating some rather unsavory activities, which are now under preliminary investigation by the US Congress. The memo contains little that is not found in other documents already admitted by Heartland to be genuine but there are a few details added and a much finer point is put on such nefarious programs as intruding into the public school system to trick teachers into “not teaching science” in science classes.

This memo is so embarrassing that Heartland has been insisting that it is fake, but a new evaluation of the document demonstrates that it is not.

Brendan DeMille and Richard Littlemore report a line by line study of the document. It is rather long and involved and is reported in its entirety here. They conclude that the “analysis demonstrates that the Climate Strategy Memo is an accurate executive summary of the information contained in budget and fundraising documents …” and they see “…. no basis whatsoever for Heartland’s assertion that the Climate Strategy memo is a ‘fake” which contains “obvious and gross misstatements of fact.””

HeartlandGate: Anti-Science Institute's Insider Reveals Secrets

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This seems to be fairly big news. The Heartland Institute is a conservative and libertarian “think” tank that cut its teeth on denying the dangers of cigarette smoking back in the 1990s. These days the Heartland Institute seems to be focused on Anthropogenic Climate Change Denialism and Science Denialism in general.

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A piece of one of the revealed documents suggesting that the Heartland Institute wants to “dissuade teachers from teaching science.”

Well, just a few hours ago, members of the climate change science, journalism, and blogging community received an interesting Valentine’s Day gift from someone who must be a Heartland Institute insider: The institute’s budget, fundraising plan, climate related strategy, and numerous other things. The story broke here on Desmog Blog.

Here’s the details:
Continue reading HeartlandGate: Anti-Science Institute's Insider Reveals Secrets →

Melting Ice and Sea Level Rise

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ResearchBlogging.orgIf all the water currently trapped in all the glaciers across the entire world melted, the sea level would rise far more than most people imagine. Almost everyone living anywhere in the world at an elevation of below about 500 feet with a direct drainage to the sea would be directly affected; The sea level rise itself might be a bit over 300 feet, but oceans tend to migrate horizontally when they rise onto previously uninnundated land surfaces. So if you lived at 500 feet above sea level in most of Maine, you’d have a much shorter walk to the rocky shoreline, but if you lived at 500 feet across much of the Gulf Coast it would only be a matter of time until the eroding sea cliff reached you incorporated you into the offshore sediments.

Having said that, Anthropogenic Global Warming has resulted in only modest sea level rise to date, and it is at this point probably true that warming of the ocean causing thermal expansion has been at the same level of magnitude (or greater) than seas rising because of the influx of melted glacial water.

The problem is, it is very difficult to measure either sea level rise or ice loss very accurately, for a number of reasons. But there is a saving grace. Or should I say, GRACE. GRACE is a NASA project; Twin satellites measure changes in the Earth’s gravity field in such a way that it is possible to identify changes in the distribution of water. From the GRACE overview statement:

Continue reading Melting Ice and Sea Level Rise →

William M. Briggs has misunderstood a high-school level data graph

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And I suspect he’s done so willingly. Well, you know what they say about statistics and liars.

Here’s the story. The Wall Street Journal and the Daily Mail independently published highly misleading and blatantly idiotic pieces on climate change. We’ve covered this extensively already over the last few days. Phil Plait, of the Bad Astronomy Blog on Discovermagazine.com, was one of numerous scientists to respond to those flaming examples of horrific bottom feeding journalism with the post “While temperatures rise, denialists reach lower.” In that post, he presented a still-image from a moving GIF that has been going around, originally from Skeptical Science. I’ve used the GIF myself just recently, but I’ll re-post it here for your convenience:

Continue reading William M. Briggs has misunderstood a high-school level data graph →

Meteorologist Exposed as Scientific Fraud (And a really cool graphic)

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Brad Johnson at Think Progress has written a piece on Meteorologist Mark Johnson, of ABC’s WEWS-TV in Cleveland Ohio. Johnson has apparently purposefully misrepresented data that was previously pre-misrepresented by the Daily Mail to make the statement that the earth has been cooling since 1998.

The earth has actually been warming since the 1990s, and the first decade of the present century is the warmest on record, but will almost certainly be exceeded in global temperature by the present decade, I write from my home in Minneapolis where temperatures on this fine January day stayed well above 40 until just moments ago when they plunged to a chilly 39 degrees F.

Brad makes his case here: AMS Certified Meteorologist Mark Johnson Claims ‘Earth Hasn’t Warmed In 15 Years’. In his post, he shows a great graphic which I’ve stolen, here (It’s a moving GIF so stare at it for a moment):

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I believe the graph is originally from Skeptical Science.

The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars

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Michael Mann, famous climate scientist, has released a book called The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines (also available as a Kindle edition). I’ve not read it yet but I thought you’d like to know about it.

Michael Mann is the guy who came up with the Hockey Stick graph and metaphor. Early reviews are positive:

In this meticulous and engaging brief on climate change research and the political backlash to legitimate scientific work, Penn State professor Mann narrates the fight against misinformation from the inside. (Publishers Weekly )

An important and disturbing account of the fossil-fuel industry’s well-funded public-relations campaign to sow doubt about the validity of the science of climate change.
Kirkus (STARRED REVIEW)

If you don’t believe our climate is changing, read this book. Dr. Mann will change your mind. For us, it’s a war of words. Preserve the Earth, and pass the ammunition. (Bill Nye the Science Guy )