From the Heartland Institute, they call out the Center for American Progress for posting falsehoods, but invite them to the conference anyway. Class act.
Liberal Think Tank’s ‘Prebuttal’ Gets Facts Wrong About The Heartland Institute, Climate Conference
Today at 2 p.m. EDT — a day before The Heartland Institute opens its Sixth International Conference on Climate Change, (ICCC-6) — the Center for American Progress will host a conference call to offer what amounts to a “prebuttal” to Heartland’s event.
The following comments by Jim Lakely, director of communications for The Heartland Institute, may be used for attribution. For additional comments, email Jim Lakely at jlakely@heartland.org or call 312/377-4000. For information on Heartland’s climate conference — held June 30 and July 1 at the Marriott Wardman Park in Washington, DC — visit the conference Web page. To register for media credentials for the conference, click here.
“This is ‘progress,’ all right — for The Heartland Institute,” Lakely said. “For years, the global warming alarmists thought the best counter-strategy to The Heartland Institute’s climate conferences was to ignore them. No matter how many scientists we brought in to talk about what the observational and historical data say about the climate, the enviro-left’s strategy never wavered — until now. This is proof Heartland’s years-long effort to help restore the scientific method to the debate is cutting through the fog of politics and panic.
“I want to take this opportunity to invite staffers from the Center for American Progress to ICCC-6, as well as the folks who will be countering Heartland’s conference on their press call,” Lakely said. “There’s time allotted for Q&A after every presentation, and the scientists in attendance will gladly field their questions.”
(You can watch Heartland’s climate conference live starting at
8:30 a.m. Thursday, June 30 and Friday, July 1.)
Lakely adds it is a “myth” that only skeptics are invited to Heartland climate conferences.
“We always invite the ‘other side,’ but few accept the challenge,” Lakely said.
One scholar who accepted the challenge, atmospheric scientist Scott Denning of Colorado State University, made a point to mention how well he and his views were received at ICCC-4 in Chicago last year and urged his colleagues to join him. Heartland’s YouTube page has a four-minute clip of Denning’s remarks here. Some excerpts:
“I learned a lot here. … I actually feel that it’s really too bad that more of my colleagues from the scientific community didn’t attend this, and haven’t in the past. And I hope we can remedy that in the future. … We can learn quite a bit from each other. … I think the most important thing that we have in common is the following: that we think we need public policy that is based on facts, rather than facts that are based on a policy agenda.”
The Center for American Progress press release has another error of fact. The organization’s Christina DiPasquale writes: “The Heartland Institute, a conservative group funded by Exxon Mobil and Charles Koch …”
“This is a common and inaccurate charge of the left when mentioning The Heartland Institute,” Lakely said. “ExxonMobil has not contributed to Heartland since 2006 — and even then, the company’s gifts were modest. In addition, the Kochs have not sent money Heartland’s way for more than a decade. And neither ‘bogeyman’ of the left is funding this conference, nor has funded any of Heartland’s past conferences. None of the organizations Heartland listed as cosponsors contribute toward the cost of these events, either.”
More information on The Heartland Institute’s funding can be found here.
I am waiting for them to make the argument that the conference, with AC, flights, etc. is adding to global warming, and should be canceled.
GPlant
As they all jet off to Durban and sign petitions to ban Dihydrogen Oxide.
How does it go? First they ignore you, then they mock you…….
So, given the blatant lies told by CAP, can we expect an apology from Romm and DiPasquale? True, I’m not affiliated in anyway with Heartland Institute, but I hate being lied to.
It is one thing to present a slanted view, all political entities do so. It is quite another thing to intentionally mislead the American public with lies. But, then, that’s the reason why the ICCC is necessary. Someone has to set the record straight.
Is Joe Romm his real name? I hope not for his sake. When this is all over I suspect he will have trouble not looking the fool at job interviews.
This can’t be a serious conference as you are not all flying to some impoverished country and flaunting your wealth behind walls of security guards and razor wire…
Maybe this is just my perception being on the skeptical side, but it always appears to me that the skeptical side is about climate facts and the scientific method, and not much about having some social agenda. The enviro-left seems to be all about a social agenda and manipulating the facts to achieve that agenda. The two sides are playing different games with different rules. I think the skeptics need to continue to stick to the facts and the scientific method but also become more aggressive in exposing the enviro-left social(ist) agenda.
Ray-Pierre sends his regrets that he cannot attend due to a scheduling conflict with the International Conference on Accordions. He’s going to be part of a panel discussion on recent trends in the preference of Zydeco over Polka.
/sarc
“CAP and blunder?” Crap and chunder!
Perhaps it’s because I’m from outside the US, but I do find this constant harping on about “the left” to be utterly irrelevant to the climate debate, and ultimately divisive and damaging. I really wish it would stop.
“The Center for American Progress press release has another error of fact. The organization’s Christina DiPasquale writes: “The Heartland Institute, a conservative group funded by Exxon Mobil and Charles Koch …”
What a waste of oxygen.
Heh, again, ROMM’s name is an acronym for Risk Of Material Misstatement. 🙂
I have posted this before, but Judith Curry did an excellent and fair analysis of funding and stated what should be obvious. Anyone who has not read this should.
http://judithcurry.com/2011/02/14/blame-on-heartland-cato-marshall-etc/
The contrast in styles between alarmists and skeptics is glaring. I congratulate Jim Lakely for being civil in the discussion.
And by the same token, making the “progressives” look Neanderthal.
The fact that CAP has published poorly-researched details may not be that surprising – these are warmists after all – but the fact that Romm and his ilk will not attend the conference is so humiliating for them and their supporters. Any Democrats in Washington who are aware of this situation must be nervously running their fingers around their collars and wondering what it all means. Well guys, the words ’emperor’ and ‘new clothes’ spring to mind. Time to wake up and smell the coffee.
AGW advocates can’t even comprehend that “big oil” funds pro-AGW groups by about 100:1 over anti-AGW groups, so what possible hope is there that they understand the chaotic, turbulent, mass of data that is the Earth’s climate well enough to tell us what temperatures will do over the next 100 years?
The “Center for American Progress” (in quotation marks because their real intent is the “Progressive” agenda, not true “Progress”) generally gets their facts wrong because they invent falsehoods. That’s no surprise whatsoever.
Sorry, cannot be there….., will try and watch some of it live…thx for the link…
I am sure they will have to come to the same conclusions as me….
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/henrys-pool-table-on-global-warming
The best way to deal with fools is to give them a forum do demonstrate that fact. Having demonstrated it, you can then demolish them.
steveta_uk says:
June 29, 2011 at 8:15 am
Perhaps it’s because I’m from outside the US, but I do find this constant harping on about “the left” to be utterly irrelevant to the climate debate, and ultimately divisive and damaging. I really wish it would stop.
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Seconded. My personal politics are right of centre, but here in the UK, all major political parties have swallowed the CAGW meme so it’s pointless labeling the alarmists as ‘leftist’.
Any of you blokes in the mother country figure out ‘from where the roots’ of freedom stem?
Because, I’m worried you’re headed down the path of tyranny an reduced freedoms.
Seems like you’d be preoccupied with that rather than worried about out our internal politics BUT I guess it takes your mind of the bleak future the uk [sic] has worked out for itself …
.
steveta_uk says:
June 29, 2011 at 8:15 am
Perhaps it’s because I’m from outside the US, but I do find this constant harping on about “the left” to be utterly irrelevant to the climate debate, and ultimately divisive and damaging. I really wish it would stop.
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May I suggest your perspective comes from living in a country and continent where all mainstream political parties are to the left of centre? That perspective is not necessarily valid for the rest of the world.
All the best.
I left a note at NPR challenging them to show up.
Paul Deacon says:
May I suggest your perspective comes from living in a country and continent where all mainstream political parties are to the left of centre? That perspective is not necessarily valid for the rest of the world.
This still doesn’t affect the original poster’s issue. Demonising an unspecified and bloc-like “Left” is not consistent with claiming that the alarmists are motivated largely by politics and it is only the pure of heart sceptics who are motivated by science. It is consistent with people who bring their political position to what should be a discussion of science, and makes “us” no better than “them”.
If more people are to take the sceptic point of view seriously, then they need to arrive at sites like this and not have their political position abused. How can AGW be defeated without recruiting all those Europeans who are left of centre? How is this achieved by constantly demonising them?
Your logic is doubly faulty anyway. If all main British parties are “left” (which they are by US standards) then Lord Monckton is a politician of the left. So is he wrong, because he is a leftie? Or is he right, despite being a leftie? Of course it is neither. His political position gives no weight either way to the correctness of his position on AGW.
Mooloo said:
June 29, 2011 at 6:19 pm
> Demonising an unspecified and bloc-like “Left” is not consistent with
> claiming that the alarmists are motivated largely by politics and it is
> only the pure of heart sceptics who are motivated by science.
There’s plenty of politics on both sides.
When the tornadoes hit the US this year, the left were gleefully proclaiming
that the states that were hit were where there was Republican opposition to
CAGW acceptance: http://tinyurl.com/6eedgr7
> [Demonising the left] is consistent with people who bring their political
> position to what should be a discussion of science…
The CAGW discussion is not one of pure science; politics has been a
driving component from the start. Mater of fact, the warmers don’t even
WANT a discussion because the “science is settled”. Science is never
settled. If it is, it isn’t science.
Politics is hiding in a wooden horse called man-made global warming. Politics
must be countered as such.
Bloke down the pub says: June 29, 2011 at 1:27 pm.
Thirded, UK also but I think the common theme here is the attack on science we are seeing with the AGW theme and don’t really see any connection to science. I’m probably pretty middling myself with what may be described with a leftish tendency from the comments here.
Mooloo, FAIL. Monckton is neither a party nor a representative of one.
The UK is, we rightists opine, committing political, social, and economic suicide. We’ll abide by the verdict of events in the (near) future on whether our opinion is valid or mere blather, as you transparently imply.
I agree with Mooloo’s quite thoughtful post, probably because we are both New Zealanders and therefore share some of the same values and influences. I get very tired of of the tendency many commenters from the USA have of demonising those whose politics are different from their own. New Zealand, it can be argued, is essentially a small-s socialist democracy which has enshrined the ideal in law that the many who can look after themselves should take care of the few who cannot. This is not because we Kiwis are all evil Socialists, but because we are not very far removed from our settler origins when we were impelled to act collectively to survive. We have our own party-political differences, but don’t tend to see the Right/Left political labels as life-or-death matters.
Most Kiwis who are also sceptical of CAGW tend to focus on the science and on the forces that promote alarmism. Shouting at someone whose politics differ from our own seem not only irrelevant but rather counterproductive to us.
I am currently living in the UK and have done so for a few years now, but I am still appalled by the unthinking and extreme tribalism of voters’ political behaviour here when I encounter it. Political tribalism seems a slightly-less uncivilised cousin of Football hooliganism but, as far as the politics of CAGW are concerned, I can see little difference between any of the poltical parties in the UK.
As far as I can see, none of the mainstream political parties in the UK seem very interested in or aware of science in any meaningful and rational way and their environmental policies are remarkably similar to each others.
I met Fred Koch and 2 of his 4 sons. If Romm wants to say koch money is toxic, I guess when David Koch gave 100 million to MIT, MIT is now run by the family. Makes MIT a bad school. Ooops, that is where Joe Romm went.
Fred and his sons, i believe all 4 attended MIT. So guilt by association reaches how far?
About “Left” and “Right” –
While the climate change debate isn’t party-specific, the Heartland Institute is a favorite target of left-leaning organizations. If you bring the Koch brothers into a debate, you have already made it Left/Right political aligned. The initiator of the rhetoric here is NOT THI, it’s the left-aligned “Center for American Progress”.