Heartland has yet to produce a press release, but I thought in the meantime I’d share some behind the scenes. If/when they do, I’ll add it to this post.
UPDATE: 11:45AM -The press release has been added below. One of the key documents is a fabrication
UPDATE2: 2:30PM The BBC’s Richard Black slimes me, without so much as asking me a single question (he has my email, I’ve corresponded with him previously) or even understanding what the project is about Hint: Richard, it’s about HIGHS and LOWS, not trends. No journalistic integrity with this one. – Anthony
I’m surprised at the number of articles out there on this where journalists have not bothered to ask me for a statement, but rather rely on their own opinion. To date, only Suzanne Goldenberg of the Guardian has asked for a statement, and she used very little of it in her article. Her colleague, Leo Hickman asked me no questions at all for his article, but instead relied on a comment I sent to Bishop Hill. So much for journalism. (Update: In response to Hickman, Lucia asks What’s horrible about this?)
(Update: 10:45AM Seth Borenstein of the AP has contacted me and I note that has waited until he can get some kind of confirmation that these documents are real. The Heartland press release is something he’s waiting for. Contacting involved parties is the right way to investigate this story.)
Here’s the query from Goldenberg:
Name: Suzanne Goldenberg
Email: suzanne.goldenberg@xxx.xxx
Website: http://www.guardian.co.uk
Message: Hello, I am seeking comment on the leak of the Heartland
documents by Desmogblog which appear to suggest you are funded by them. Is
this accurate? Thanks
MY REPLY:
===============================================================
Heartland simply helped me find a donor for funding a special project having to do with presenting some new NOAA surface data in a public friendly graphical form, something NOAA themselves is not doing, but should be. I approached them in the fall of 2011 asking for help, on this project not the other way around.
They do not regularly fund me nor my WUWT website, I take no salary from them of any kind.
It is simply for this special project requiring specialized servers, ingest systems, and plotting systems. They also don’t tell me what the project should look like, I came up with the idea and the design. The NOAA data will be displayed without any adjustments to allow easy side-by-side comparisons of stations, plus other graphical representations output 24/7/365. Doing this requires programming, system design, and bandwidth, which isn’t free and I could not do on my own. Compare the funding I asked for initially to
get it started to the millions some other outfits (such as CRU) get in the UK for studies that then end up as a science paper behind a publishers paywall, making the public pay again. My project will be a free public service when finished.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Description from the same (Heartland) documents:
Weather Stations Project
Every few months, weathermen report that a temperature record – either high
or low – has been broken somewhere in the U.S. This is not surprising, since weather is highly variable and reliable instrument records date back less than 100 years old. Regrettably, news of these broken records is often used by environmental extremists as evidence that human emissions are causing either global warming or the more ambiguous “climate change.”
Anthony Watts, a meteorologist who hosts WattsUpwithThat.com, one of the
most popular and influential science blogs in the world, has documented that many of the
temperature stations relied on by weathermen are compromised by heat radiating from nearby buildings, machines, or paved surfaces. It is not uncommon for these stations to over-state temperatures by 3 or 4 degrees or more, enough to set spurious records.
Because of Watts’ past work exposing flaws in the current network of temperature stations (work that The Heartland Institute supported and promoted), the National Aeronautics and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the government agency responsible for maintaining temperature stations in the U.S., has designated a new network of higher-quality temperature stations that meet its citing specifications. Unfortunately, NOAA doesn’t widely publicize data from this new network, and puts raw data in spreadsheets buried on one of its Web sites.
Anthony Watts proposes to create a new Web site devoted to accessing the new
temperature data from NOAA’s web site and converting them into easy-to-understand graphs that can be easily found and understood by weathermen and the general interested public. Watts has deep expertise in Web site design generally and is well-known and highly regarded by weathermen and meteorologists everywhere. The new site will be promoted heavily at WattsUpwithThat.com. Heartland has agreed to help Anthony raise $88,000 for the project in 2011. The Anonymous Donor has already pledged $44,000. We’ll seek to raise the balance.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
DeSmog, as part of their public relations for hire methodology to demonize skeptics, will of course try to find nefarious motives for this project. But there simply are none here. It’s something that needs doing because NOAA hasn’t made this new data available in a user friendly visual format. For example, here’s a private company website that tracks highs and low records using NOAA data:
http://mapcenter.hamweather.com/records/yesterday/us.html
NOAA doesn’t make any kind of presentation like that either, which is why such things are often done by private ventures.
================================================================
That above is what I sent to the Guardian, and also in a comment to Bishop Hill.
The reaction has been interesting, particularly since the David-Goliath nature of funding is laid bare here. For example, Al Gore says he started a 300 million dollar advertising campaign. The Daily Bayonet sums it up pretty well:
Hippies hate Heartland « The Daily Bayonet
What the Heartland document show is how badly warmists have been beaten by those with a fraction of the resources they’ve enjoyed.
Al Gore spent $300 million advertising the global warming hoax. Greenpeace, the WWF, the Sierra Club, The Natural Resources Defense Council, NASA, NOAA, the UN and nation states have collectively poured billions into climate research, alternative energies and propaganda, supported along the way by most of the broadcast and print media.
Yet they’ve been thwarted by a few honest scientists, a number of blogs and a small pile of cash from Heartland.
Here’s a clue for DeSmog, Joe Romm and other warmists enjoying a little schadenfreude today. It’s not the money that’s beating you, it’s the message.
Your climate fear-mongering backfired. You cried wolf so often the villagers stopped listening. Then Climategate I & II gave the world a peek behind the curtain into the shady practices, petty-feuding and data-manipulation that seems to pass for routine in climate ‘science’.
So enjoy the moment, warmists, because what this episode really demonstrates to the world is how little money was needed to bring the greatest scam in history to its knees. That’s not something I’d think you’d want to advertise, but knock yourselves out. It’s what you do best.
I see none of the same people at the Guardian or the blogs complaining about this:
Dr. James Hansen’s growing financial scandal, now over a million dollars of outside income
NASA records released to resolve litigation filed by the American Tradition Institute reveal that Dr. James E. Hansen, an astronomer, received approximately $1.6 million in outside, direct cash income in the past five years for work related to — and, according to his benefactors, often expressly for — his public service as a global warming activist within NASA.
This does not include six-figure income over that period in travel expenses to fly around the world to receive money from outside interests. As specifically detailed below, Hansen failed to report tens of thousands of dollars in global travel provided to him by outside parties — including to London, Paris, Rome, Oslo, Tokyo, the Austrian Alps, Bilbao, California, Australia and elsewhere, often business or first-class and also often paying for his wife as well — to receive honoraria to speak about the topic of his taxpayer-funded employment, or get cash awards for his activism and even for his past testimony and other work for NASA.
(Update: Dr. Hansen responds here)
Or the NGO’s and their budgets (thanks Tom Nelson)
With tiny budgets like $310 million, $100 million, and $95 million respectively, how can lovable underdogs like Greenpeace, Sierra Club, and NRDC *ever* hope to compete with mighty Heartland’s $6.5 million?
Heartland is projecting a boost in revenues from $4.6 million in 2011, to $7.7 million in 2012. That will enable an operating budget of $6.5 million, as well as topping up the fund balance a further $1.2 million.
[Sept 2011]: Greenpeace Environmental Group Turns 40
Greenpeace International, based in Amsterdam, now has offices in more than 40 countries and claims some 2.8 million supporters. Its 1,200-strong staff ranges from “direct action” activists to scientific researchers.
Last year, its budget reached $310 million.
[Nov 2011]: Sierra Club Leader Will Step Down – NYTimes.com
He said the Sierra Club had just approved the organization’s largest annual budget ever, about $100 million for 2012, up from $88 million this year.
[Oct 2011]: Do green groups need to get religion?
That’s Peter Lehner talking. Peter, a 52-year-old environmental lawyer, is executive director of the Natural Resources Defense Council, one of America’s most important environmental groups. The NRDC has a $95 million budget, about 400 employees and about 1.3 million members. They’re big and they represent a lot of people.
But me and my little temperature web project to provide a public service are the real baddies here apparently. The dichotomy is stunning.
Some additional added notes:
“Because of Watts’ past work exposing flaws in the current network of temperature stations (work that The Heartland Institute supported and promoted), the National Aeronautics and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the government agency responsible for maintaining temperature stations in the U.S., has designated a new network of higher-quality temperature stations that meet its citing specifications.”
For the record, and as previously cited on WUWT, NCDC started on the new network in 2003 http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/crn/annual-reports.html Heartland may have confused the Climate Reference Network with the updated COOP/USHCN modernization network which did indeed start after my surfacestations project: What the modernized USHCN will look like (April 29, 2008)
They then asked for 100 million to update it NOAA/NCDC – USHCN is broken please send 100 million dollars (Sept 21, 2010)
###
Moderators, do your best to keep the sort of hateful messages I’ve been getting in the past 18 hours in check in comments below. Please direct related comments from other threads to this one. Commenters please note the site policy.
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PRESS RELEASE 11:45 AM – source http://heartland.org/press-releases/2012/02/15/heartland-institute-responds-stolen-and-fake-documents
FEBRUARY 15, 2012 – The following statement from The Heartland Institute – a free-market think tank – may be used for attribution. For more information, contact Communications Director Jim Lakely at jlakely@heartland.org and 312/377-4000.
Yesterday afternoon, two advocacy groups posted online several documents they claimed were The Heartland Institute’s 2012 budget, fundraising, and strategy plans. Some of these documents were stolen from Heartland, at least one is a fake, and some may have been altered.
The stolen documents appear to have been written by Heartland’s president for a board meeting that took place on January 17. He was traveling at the time this story broke yesterday afternoon and still has not had the opportunity to read them all to see if they were altered. Therefore, the authenticity of those documents has not been confirmed.
Since then, the documents have been widely reposted on the Internet, again with no effort to confirm their authenticity.
One document, titled “Confidential Memo: 2012 Heartland Climate Strategy,” is a total fake apparently intended to defame and discredit The Heartland Institute. It was not written by anyone associated with The Heartland Institute. It does not express Heartland’s goals, plans, or tactics. It contains several obvious and gross misstatements of fact.
We respectfully ask all activists, bloggers, and other journalists to immediately remove all of these documents and any quotations taken from them, especially the fake “climate strategy” memo and any quotations from the same, from their blogs, Web sites, and publications, and to publish retractions.
The individuals who have commented so far on these documents did not wait for Heartland to confirm or deny the authenticity of the documents. We believe their actions constitute civil and possibly criminal offenses for which we plan to pursue charges and collect payment for damages, including damages to our reputation. We ask them in particular to immediately remove these documents and all statements about them from the blogs, Web sites, and publications, and to publish retractions.
How did this happen? The stolen documents were obtained by an unknown person who fraudulently assumed the identity of a Heartland board member and persuaded a staff member here to “re-send” board materials to a new email address. Identity theft and computer fraud are criminal offenses subject to imprisonment. We intend to find this person and see him or her put in prison for these crimes.
Apologies: The Heartland Institute apologizes to the donors whose identities were revealed by this theft. We promise anonymity to many of our donors, and we realize that the major reason these documents were stolen and faked was to make it more difficult for donors to support our work. We also apologize to Heartland staff, directors, and our allies in the fight to bring sound science to the global warming debate, who have had their privacy violated and their integrity impugned.
Lessons: Disagreement over the causes, consequences, and best policy responses to climate change runs deep. We understand that.
But honest disagreement should never be used to justify the criminal acts and fraud that occurred in the past 24 hours. As a matter of common decency and journalistic ethics, we ask everyone in the climate change debate to sit back and think about what just happened.
Those persons who posted these documents and wrote about them before we had a chance to comment on their authenticity should be ashamed of their deeds, and their bad behavior should be taken into account when judging their credibility now and in the future.
Anthony,
Placing aside the $88,000 you have obtained via The Heartland Institute for a new website, can you further ‘clarify’ this paragraph from an internal document:
Two questions: 1. Heartland say they have important interaction with you beyond monetary assistance. How do they coordinate with you? Would you be willing to list all contact with them and describe the purpose of each action? 2. Are you comfortable receiving support from an institute with an unethical history?
Furthermore, I notice your careful choice of words, so when you say
May we infer that they irregulary provide funds for associated ‘projects’ or that similar donors do?
REPLY: No, you may not and they don’t. That’s not careful wording, simply a statement of fact. Of course people such as yourself will try to find all sorts of nefarious motives. Also, and most imporatant, the figure pledged thus far is $44K, not $88K, nor the roundup to $90K listed in news stories. – Anthony
Laughable…
So per the way the ad on the screen lined up your site policy is ….
Over 1 Million Satisfied Customers.
Doesn’t look like much of a gotcha’ to me, but tortured facts are the coin of the realm in AGW Land. In AGW Land, “two plus two equals anything I want it to be”.
The alarmists have more fun with faith than with science and of course they like the idea of a crusade – and a crusade always needs a target. When you have religious fervor you start to lose rationality.
I suspect that if NOAA and NASA were doing their job for public service it would still cost way more that what Anthony will do for the same info and presentation. They should thank him – but I won’t hold my breath.
Anthony,
Stay strong. Journalists today are like a pack of coyotes, they only attack in packs and only if they sense weakness. Total transparency and the truth is your best weapons.
One could actually only hope for this story to get wide traction, if only to juxtapose the tiny budget of Heartland against the opinion buying machines on the other side of the argument.
In all these years I’ve received $100 for an article and a little more for a translation. Am I part of the well funded denial machine too?
Applauding Heartland…Koch Brothers…Microsoft…and whoever and everyone else who donates to Heartland.
Giving the other-side of the coin…is what learning and science is about. Kids deserve that opportunity and it sorely is lacking from such as the IPCC and echo-chambers.
Reading comprehension must be hard to acquire in an echo-chamber.
I’ve been reading comments, on blogs, which try to take this sentence to mean Heartland is out to dissuade teachers from teaching science…“His effort will focus on providing curriculum that shows that the topic of climate change is controversial and uncertain – two key points that are effective at dissuading teachers from teaching science.”
Poor Tardish thinking…reread the sentence in whole. it is the lack of “controversy and uncertainty” being taught in schools – that dissuade NORMAL SCIENCE from being taught in schools.
Thank you All!
Thank You Mr Watts
What I’ve noticed up to now is the obvious contradiction of alarmist claims that the ‘climate denier machine’ is well funded.The leaked documents reveal clearly that climate denial is not well funded at all.
For years now I have wondereed if the alarmists were correct, and now that question has been answered. It does not pay to be a climate skeptic. It has been the greens who have been well funded all along.
Its amazing that climate skepticism has been this successful considering how little money is required.
Thanks Desmogblog. Nice work.
Thank you for all of your hard work, Anthony. It is precisely these mendacious kinds of news reports that converted me to skepticism many years ago.
Anyone who sees the facts in this case and decides that the Warmists are David and you are Goliath have a screw loose…. which makes them prime pickin’s for Warmist propaganda, I suppose.
Keep up the good fight!
Well done, Anthony Watts. You have my sincere thanks. The cry in the wilderness IS being heard, belatedly.
It’s hard to believe such an obvious scam is taking so long to bring down. Keep plugging away.
The project is worthwhile so go for it! BTW, one of my issues is finding reliable regional averages, mins and maxes, I don’t know if that is part of your project, but hope it is 🙂
So lets see if I have this right, if anyone takes any money from anyone to do scientific research their reputation is ruined for life, but if Warmist take billions of dollars per year based on producing outcomes their sponsors demand that’s just the way science works?
The skeptic’s funding is like someone peeing in the advocacy funding river of the global warming industry. Yet they claim that it is because of this funding that the skeptics have taken over the blogosphere and skepticism is on the rise. Of course the takeover is because their science is collapsing and mother Gaia doesn’t follow orders.
Anthony, just a thought for your consideration. Why not put the “hateful messages” to which you refer, perhaps in another posting, closed with no comments able to be added, with enough information to identify the senders of those messages so that your readers and the world at large can see just how despicable these people are.
Do you mind a few “hateful messages” for the Desmogblog Watermelons in the comments?
REPLY: You had to ask? No hateful messages in this thread at all. – Anthony
So what if Heartland funds anyone. Aren’t Greenpeace etc. fund Warmist scientists. I don’t see what the hullabaloo is about. SO WHAT. I don’t care if Exxon funded WUWT, afterall BP and Shell have funded CRU. All I care about is getting at the truth of what our climate is doing.
REPLY: For the record, neither Exxon nor BP have ever provided any donations, nor have I ever approached them – Anthony
Anthony, I am quite grateful for the work you do and your website. I stumbled on it from somewhere maybe on Facebook and read it pretty much every day! Please keep up the good work; this silly reaction of the warmers and disproportionate money involved just shows you are having a great impact that threatens the party line!
Private funding for a private venture, Why would this cause concern? If Exxon had paid for this it would be equally non-eventful. The warmist only harp about this because its what they do. “Demonize the opposition” has long been one of their primary tactics,
The revealing thing about the Heartland leak (if confirmed) is not that individuals like Carter or Watts get funded, although it’s going to be difficult to convince a lot of people that taking funding from a non-science special interest group is compatible with perfect objectivity by the one getting funded. It’s also going to be difficult to convince people that individuals like Bob Carter are getting funded to do science without knowledge of his conclusions beforehand (and I personally never believed this to be the case with the surfacestations project, given the history of posts on this site).
Much of that depends on interpretation though and will inevitably vary across individuals depending on their views on climate change. However, the documents unequivocally demonstrate the motives internal to the Heartland organization to spread anti-climate propaganda, even in to the K-12 classroom, their secret hatred toward opposition (and I thought they wanted to “debate” all the time?). None of this is very surprising; very few rational people thought the NIPCC or related works were meant to advance science.
At 10:36 AM on 15 February, Chris Colose writes:
Er, just what the puck is construed to constitute “anti-climate propaganda,” putzie? We’re talking about some kind of publicity to generate public antipathy toward the climate itself, maybe?
Or perhaps persuasive material aimed at informing people about the blatant fraud that’s been foisted on us by Algore and “Mike’s Hockey Team” and all the rest of the utterly corrupt participants in the great man-made climate change scam?
===
Its good to see you can work in an attack on Dr. Hansen no matter the content of the post.
REPLY: and still no comment on the David-Golaith nature of the funding – Anthony
What journalism? If there were times when journalists were the ones to keep the establishment in check, these times are long gone. Today, a journalist is a paid agent of the establishment, a cogwheel in the propaganda machine.
Establishment is not happy about your project, which reveals that even the “raw” data they use for AGW propaganda is suspect. They will use every tool at their disposal to make your project go off the track (and they have so much more tools than you do, not only because they have much more money and time but because they lie, and you don’t).
I think that when discerning members of the greater public see the differences in incomes and budgets for the pro-CAGW and anti-CAGW camps they will realise just how foolish the pro camp is for drawing broader attention to this matter. It serves only to weaken further their oft-stated position.
Stay cool, Anthony, sir – these types of derision and diversionary tactics are likely to increase as the ‘team’ message gets weaker.
As can be seen, the actual ca$h figures speak for themselves – you have nothing to hide or to feel ashamed of. Indeed, many will hopefully recall, in the future annals of history, that yourself and others were the ‘few’ that stood against the ‘mighty’ and won!
(raises clenched fist in defiant comradeship, ‘Power to the People’ – lol)
I wish I could say that I am shocked by this, but I’m not. Sorry, Anthony.
Anthony,
do you know the name of the Anonymous Donor, who is funding your project with 44,000$?
And do you feel good, when you hear of Heartland funding the classroom project with the aim, “dissuading teachers from teaching [climate] science”? Do you realize now the context of all fundings?
REPLY: No idea. And I think that’s just sloppy writing. Let’s see what Heartland says about it. – Anthony
Hang in there Anthony. I wonder if the “Merchant of Venice” was a nasty big oil manipulator and “denier”.
“Truth will come to light; murder cannot be hid long; a man’s son may, but in the end truth will out.”
“
From the emails:
This isn’t true:
“Because of Watts’ past work exposing flaws in the current network of temperature stations (work that The Heartland Institute supported and promoted), the National Aeronautics and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the government agency responsible for maintaining temperature stations in the U.S., has designated a new network of higher-quality temperature stations that meet its citing specifications.”
Have you notified Heartland of the fact that the CRN has existed since at least 2003 (http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/crn/annual-reports.html) and was instituted as a result of a 1999 NRC report?
And please let us know how Heartland “supported and promoted” the surfacestations project.
REPLY: Yes I’ve sent them a note. But if I changed it here I’d be accused of altering the documents, so I posted it verbatum. They published and promoted this booklet for me and distrubuted it in 2009. http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/surfacestationsreport_spring09.pdf
The GAO also agrees: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/30/gao-report-on-the-poor-quality-of-the-us-climate-monitoring-network/
-Anthony
“I see none of the same people at the Guardian or the blogs complaining about this:
Dr. James Hansen’s growing financial scandal, now over a million dollars of outside income”
A link to Hansen’s response might be in order, don’t you think? Google “Cowards in Our Democracies: Part 2”
REPLY: I wasn’t aware of that, or that it was a response. But I’ll link to it. Thanks for the tip – Anthony
@sceptical –
The “attack” on Dr. Hansen was very much pertinent and applicable to this topic. The Pro-CAGW crowd is made up of immoral hypocrites who blindly ignore any criminal activity by the people they agree with, but turn into a rabid lynch mob when anyone they disagree with gets a small, legitimate donation to do actual science. It’s really not hard to understand, unless you’re doing the ‘blindly ignore’ thing.
Reminds me of the glee with which the Guardian received the Sarah Palin e-mails. Enlisting people to go through them tooth and comb and finding…..oh dear…a perfectly honest politician doing her job to the best of her ability, albeit with a slightly quirky outlook. Now the Gruniad (Gurdian, it is an English Joke!) has the “Heartland tapes”….. No doubt they will end up as embarrassed by the lack of any wrong doing here as they were by the “Palin tapes”. You have to feel quite sorry for the likes of Monbiot who struggle to read an entire sentence yet claim to be a journalist.
However when a few like minded rich folks realise what Heartland have achieved with so little money I imagine a few more of them will want to be on board. The winning team attracts the money.
Anthony, I am loathe to think that there are nefarious schemes and whatnot at play here, but really… $44,000 to write software that analyses data? I made that much in an entire year as a professional programmer. It took me a day to write up the trend code for HadCRUT3, and another month of extremely part time work for the OpenGL visualizer. For free.
I know it isn’t cheap to run a website, but that’s what ad revenue is for. People do make a living from it, and you know that for a fact. $44,000 is a lot.
Let the lesson be learned: Disclose your source of income for research *before* some schmuck tries to make it look like a conflict of interest. It’s what scientists do.
As for the person who broke into Heartland’s system… I hope they go to jail for this cyber crime.
Hopefully you allow my comments to go through.
The desperation of the Warmongers . . . . plumbing new depths of crass stupidity.
Anthony, could you say that 100% of the money would go towards setting up the website, and 0% in your pocket? I think it is probably reasonable if this is not the case, but if it IS the case, that’s a very powerful argument against it.
REPLY: Yep, servers (primary and backup, rendering and ingest systems (primary and backup) server Colo rental, satellite ingest system, and cost of programming. The other half of the project (to keep it running long term) hasn’t been funded. – Anthony
Antony;
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. ”
I’d say you’re one step away from the win.
Anthony,
There are a couple of things you bring up, however, that might need some contemplation. I would like to add that in writing what I write in this comment post, I do not want to implicate you in any way, just the general money trail.
Firstly, as far as I understand it Heartland is a tax-exempt organization that merely seeks to provide information for public policy discussions. The leaked documents, if real, would seem to suggest that their activities go beyond that scope. It appears to me that they should no longer be tax-exempt and instead be classified as lobbyists.
Secondly, and this is where I am expressly not trying to say anything about *your* Heartland funding, each individual grant (your website, Singer’s salary, etc.) from organizations such as this (Heartland, CEI, AEI, etc.) are indeed fairly small! However, there are many different organizations funding many different aspects of climate skepticism and its subsequent amplification in the media. So we have a relatively small number of corporate interests donating chunks of money to a plethora of organizations that then funnel the money to a relatively small number of climate skeptics. In doing so, they get a fairly sizable bang for the buck, wouldn’t you say?
The point is not that a relatively small amount of funding (Heartland vs. Greenpeace in your example) convinced an otherwise hostile public that the climate alarmists were wrong. The point is that given human nature, the public would rather not change their ways and it only takes a small amount of money invested by various organizations to safeguard the relatively large profits of their corporate benefactors.
These lefties are shocked by the fact that skeptical scientists get money for the work they do. How many warmists work for free? Does Al Gore (or Michael Mann) work for free?
Really! The funding can change the science, Really?
WUWT is not besmirched, slowed down or disproved by this. The facts are what they are and there are more here than anywhere on the web.
Well done for getting some funding Anthony. It’s hard to get and there isn’t much private cash around, unlike the tax receipts going to fund the “mainstream”.
Walk hard.
Though experiment: Let’s say I’m a leading commentator on, say, which brand of automobile is best for the consumer. It is revealed that GM “helped me find a a donor for funding” some project… to the tune of almost $100,000. Does this strengthen the credibility of my new report, which states enthusiastically that GM has absolutely the only worthwhile car on the market?
Who cares about their internet hate machine or their attempt to bully the people who exposed their massive fraud, they are losing and they know it. People are freezing to death in Europe at this very moment while these Jet-setting socialist zealots continue the scam. Hopefully, the ringleaders will be jailed in the very near future. They underestimate the legitimate anger, disgust, and pain this fraud has caused people all over the world. Keep up the good work! Thanks Anthony, we are in your debt.
It is refreshing to know that the Climate Research Unit (CRU) in Britain was founded in the early 1970s with financing from Shell and BP as written in the book: “The history of the University of East Anglia, Norwich; Page 285)” By Michael Sanderson. CRU was still being funded in 2008 by Shell, BP, the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate and UK Nirex LTD (the nuclear waste people in the UK).
http://web.archive.org/web/20080627194858/http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/about/history/
Now, who was being funded by BIG OIL?
Anthony keep your chin high mate!
When responding to journalists, you should point out that any funding Heartland and associates get is nothing compared to the Big Climate trough. Keep the figure on them.
For one, highlight the fact that in Australia the Government has set aside $100 million for advertising to brainwash the public that the carbon tax is a good thing. So far, they’ve already spent $24 million of that and recruited the likes of Cate Blanchett and Michael Caton to spread their carbon tax is good message all over Australian TV’s.
http://www.liberal.org.au/Latest-News/2011/12/01/100M-Carbon-Tax-Advertising-Blitz-Confirmed.aspx
So, Watts claims to independence from fossil industry money were false. No surprise there. Nor surprise that he is linked to an organisation that wants to shut out opposing voices and stop science teachers from teaching science.
A little surprised that the best distraction he could think of to all this anti-science dishonesty was to write that “Al Gore has more money!!”
REPLY: Show me where “fossil fuel money” is involved, provide a citation. For the record, as shown in the Climategate emails, the Climate Research Unit in the UK is funded by Shell and BP, and the United States DOE, all of which deal in fossil fuels – Anthony
It’s so long since anything has got them this excited that it’s almost worth it, the poor things haven’t had any fun recently and if this is the best they can do then I feel for them… no honestly I do!
It’s funny how they ignore the fact that BP and Shell funded the CRU, in fact why wouldn’t big oil fund the AGW camp? The scarcer oil becomes the more they benefit!
The really funny thing is that the likes of Greenpeace just can’t see that they are being well and truly played; bless!
Yeah, it is expensive to put out propaganda, but cheap to tell the truth (you terrible person you). Thank God we live in the Internet age.
Blast it, Anthony, when you are attacked by a mad dog, it is not enough to defend yourself; you must fight back. Well, ok, this post is a fight back. But you ALSO need to discuss the Alarmists funding.
Have you ever looked at the USA NSF funding requests??? Warming, warming, warming…It is difficult to get any science done in any field unless some bloviation can be managed about how your item of interest contributes to global warming.
Don’t forget the Climategate 1 post about thousands of dollars from Shell Oil, either. (I think it was Shell). The oil companies have diversified into alternate energies AND they make more profit on fossils if they can drive its price up.
“Follow the money” is a classic. It is often relevant. This is OUR issue if only we start sending documentation of the reality to all the Journalists who ask about YOUR funding.
But what will stop the Warmist shrieking once and for all is physiology studies showing the truth about how CO2 actually affects humans and animals. Premature human babies are incubated in 7% CO2 to help their little lungs develop. That is almost 200 times atmosphere. Rodents routinely have 2-4% CO2 in their burrows, or about 50 times atmosphere, so we know mammals aren’t going to be bent out of shape by a mere doubling. The longest-lived rodent, the naked mole rat (29 years) has 6 or 8% CO2 in its burrows.
When animal scientists want to know about nutrients, they study growth rates. I have found only 3 studies so far, all showing that embryonic chickens develop faster with more CO2.
[Multiple screen names violate site Policy. ~dbs, mod.]
Yet another Pyrrhic victory for the warmists.
Financial support from Heartland for the surface stations project will shock no-one (except perhaps for how little the amount is that is being hyped).
Reasonable analysis of the comparative amounts involved will only serve to increase the ongoing one way traffic to the skeptical camp.
Apparently it really isn’t what you have – rather how you use it.
OT but sks have started their attack on Dr. Fahrenholt.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/fritz-vahrenholt-duped-on-climate-change.html
For the media who read here due to the above.
Off the subject but rather on your actions.
After all this is just some more “swiftboating” and we all know John F. Kerry’s awards and citations are real, that he had good intentions when as a Lt. in the U.S. Navey Reserve and meeting with the North Viet Amry and Viet Cong in Paris France.
So, go away and work your protection racket for Pres. Obama. There are to many facts herein for your type of wrok.
Its just U.S..
I’m sorry to say Anthony that you will now be ranked right up there with Goldstein as a target of the Two Minute Hate. That’s how these neo-INGSOC types roll sadly. Be consoled by the fact that you have helped to spread truth far and wide. David vs. Goliath indeed. You do a lot with your slingshot.
They really did open up the wrong can of worms didn’t they? WTG Desmugblog!
You seem particularly concerned about your role in this, Anthony. Actually, your $88,000 is small potatoes compared to much larger concerns these documents raise. The first I can think of is the classroom project. This is scary. The Heartland memo writes that the effort is to promote curricula, and I quote here “that are effective at dissuading teachers from teaching science.” I think science teachers should be teaching science. Do You?
When warmistas encounter opposition, they are so absolutely sure they are right that they can’t imagine any rational person not falling in line. Communists were like that too. So they fall back on one of a) big oil (but look how paltry the Heartland $ is, and they do other things than climate with it), b) deniers are retarded or c) its a communication (read propaganda) problem. Never ever admit you are wrong–what’s that in Latin? Great motto eh?
The silver lining here is that these people are sealing themselves up more and more completely within their own reality warp. It won’t be pretty when it all comes crashing down, but that’s their problem.
At 10:36 AM on 15 February, Chris Colose writes:
Er, just what the devil is construed to constitute “anti-climate propaganda,” putzie? We’re talking about some kind of publicity to generate public antipathy toward the climate itself, maybe?
Or perhaps persuasive material aimed at informing people about the blatant fraud that’s been foisted on us by Algore and “Mike’s Hockey Team” and all the rest of the utterly corrupt participants in the great man-made climate change scam?
===
Yippie!
It looks like both sides are exposed now.
Finally both sides can come together and behave like grown-ups from now on. I really began to hate the childish yes-no arguments all the time.
To the alarmists: Where is the catastrophic warming?
To the skeptics: Where is the huge cooling? This La Niña looks to become another pathetic weak one. Just like the last one of 2010/2011.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_January_2012.png
Conclusion: The human signal is already there to be seen in the satellite temperature record.
Roy Spencer and the majority of skeptics (even Lord Monckton) recognizes some warming by a doubling of CO2. So do I. We’ve already gone up 110 ppm.
Just to prove that the Master’s motives are as white as the driven snow and above reproach, I think he should make all emails between him and St. Charles of Heartland available for public scrutiny
I found the description of Heartland’s campaign to spread doubt on global warming to be similar to the industry-funded campaigns against restrictions on second hand smoking, CFC regulation, etc. as described in Natalie Orestes’ book Merchants of Doubt. It certainly sounds like Heartland is working off of the same playbook.
I am shocked, SHOCKED!, to learn that people not sucking on the government …spigot… also need money to do science.
Ever since I got my first welfare check, I have been able to maintain my purity and the proper level of contempt for those nasty capitalists.
Re the so-called “David-Goliath” funding comparison:
(a) Heartland is not the only organisation funding selective skepticism aimed at the unwelcome conclusions of the AGW hypothesis.
(b) Action to combat the predicted consequences of AGW is not the only target of funding by Greenpeace and the other NGOs
So to compare the total budget of Heartland with the total budget of various NGOs is just meaningless
So now we have a clear picture: There is the Heartland Institute that has an agenda. We have the AGW crew on the other has that has an agenda as well. Gee, I didn’t need an article for that.
Andrew, when you link to Daily Mail articles as you recently did about solar cycle 25 you set a standard: The Daily Mail is not a reliable scientific source, and this wasn’t worth the link if you are curious about earths climate rather than wanting to prove your point. (AGW proponents, please not: This all applies to you lot too)
That is why I hardly want to read about the climate until we are a number of years beyond now: Then you may see if the current flat line actually means something or not. Mind you, I moved from believing this to skeptic because the AGW crew basically state that the flat doesn’t exist, even if I see it. That makes me highly suspicious. Predictions about global cooling because of a solar decline comparable to the Dalton minimum is equally idiotic. The Dalton minimum itself hardly saw global temperatures falling.
Watch the graph for a number of years. That is the only serious scientific thing to do.
At 11:11 AM on 15 February, peeke gripes:
Hm. In the cited article, The Daily Mail reported that:
What, a newspaper isn’t supposed to report on information made public by the precisely the sorts of reputable climate experts extolled by the CAGW catastrophists? When nuggets like this:
…are brought to their attention, the journalists of The Daily Mail are supposed to “spike” it to prevent their readers from learning about it?
Yep, Mr. Watts did “set a standard” with his blog’s mention of The Daily Mail having reported the findings of scientists in that article, just as The Daily Mail met the standards of professional journalism by ensuring that the facts as reported were verified, meeting their responsibilities as a news organ.
peeke, have you got anything factual with which to prove that what was reported in that Daily Mail article was in error, or are you just condemning this particular newspaper as “not a reliable scientific source“?
Because, bubbeleh, that’s the logical fallacy of argumentum ad hominem (evading address of the substance by attacking the source instead).
Meaning that you’ve lost the argument.
Anthony,
Time you put up a prominent “Donate to WUWT!” button so we can all vote with our mountains of ill-gotten cash (evil deniers that we are.)
Lots of fun, eh? “effort will focus on providing curriculum that shows that the topic of climate change is controversial and uncertain – two key points that are effective at dissuading teachers from teaching science” is nice, though I note that the attempts to spin this are already starting.
Heartland’s statement that “no more than 5% of total budget from a single corporate entity” now looks to have been very carefully crafted, now we know that 20% came from a single individual!
“At present we sponsor the NIPCC to undermine the official United Nation’s IPCC reports” is also pleasantly honest – no pretence there of actually doing any real science.
Craig-
Whatever a “warmist” is, they probably are right, because they have that stuff called ‘physics’ and ‘data’ to back them up. The problem is you have to get educated in the physics, and you need to learn the data, its limitations, and how it applies/does not apply to the problem of interest. Despite what everyone thinks, you can’t read a blog to get all that. And absolutely no one here understands when they are being duped, like in the last post on sea level rise, or can spot errors (like in your paleoclimate reconstruction). It’s mostly a lot of gullible, angry people who hate the idea CO2 influences climate.
An anonymous multmillionaire is funding the suppression of science teaching in your country. How is this not headline news?
[Reply: a well known billionaire is funding the pseudo science blog sceptical science. That billionaire is a multiple convicted felon who worked willingly for the Nazis in WWII. How is that not headline news? -mod]
Haven’t heard a word today about the huge amount of tax dollars spent on warming propaganda.
In the end this kerfuffle won’t matter much, what will trump this is the cooling that comes from a Maunder Minimum and continued defections by former warmers! Keep up the good work.
Does Anthony have a helicopter?
REPLY: No, nor even a plane like Mr. Gore does, – Anthony
Keep in mind.
If you/we were not dead center on target they would not say a word if an astroid hit U.S. all on the top of our heads.
You will feel the hate. They have the thug street gang way, watch your back.
Actually you would think that the warmistas would want to bury this information. As you point out it doesn’t make them look good. They spend and spend and spend and spend and spend and their message is failing. Others spend very little and defeat them. It does not at all make those supporting AGW look good.
So of course in brilliant fashion they are displaying just how they are over matched by vastly less money. heh.
Anthony, IMHO you are one of the genuine ‘white knights’ in this great battle for truth; Leo Hickman is a Warmist copywriter masquerading as a journalist and most readers who are aware of his track record disbelieve his nonsense. It takes a while, but serial liars and snake-oil salesmen are usually brought down by their own calumny.
The real point is : why should you not receive funding for running WUWT from anyone who wants to fund you? Science should stand up to scrutiny no matter who funds it. These leftwing rags and conspiracy theorists are simply looking for a fight these days and to avoid debate when they continually insist any critic of theirs is being funded by “someone”. They receive more funding than their critics and often it is the taxpayer doing it!
88k for a website is the astonishing bit WRT Surface Stations. I know loads of people who could have done it for wayyy under that! As to the rest, guess we shall have to see….
REPLY: Actually it is $44K, and the phase 2 to keep it running may/may not be funded. Try hiring a good programmer for a year and purchasing the relevant equipment for $44K – Anthony
It appears that those who receive government funding do not like those who receive private funding. After all, only those who are correct but also honest and truthful receive government funding while everyone else has to look to the private sector. (that’s sarcasm folks, just in case you missed it)
@Phil C
If you try to make a point – try using the whole quote
“His effort will focus on providing curriculum that shows that the topic of climate change is controversial and uncertain – two key points that are effective at dissuading teachers from teaching science.”
Post-normal science practices in AGW do NOT teach “controversial and uncertain”[ies] of the AGW hypothesis in school….THUS they do not teach Normal Science.
44K to Anthony Watts to study what he knows about.
$1.9 million to Dr. Michael Mann to study……………………..environmental temperature on the transmission of vector-borne diseases.
No wonder the Warmists won’t give. Follow the BIG money >>>>>>>
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704541004575010931344004278.html
$100 tip jar donation made towards getting that $44K up to the $88K you need
Keep up the good work Anthony, the world needs more honest men like you.
Anthony:
Given Michael Mann’s apparent claim in his new book to have received terrible emails and the implication that it is only skeptics who send such emails, I do believe, as some other commenters have urged, that compiling these nasty comments and creating a separate post would provide something of a reality check.
You have also been very tolerant IMO with some of the comments that have been posted here.
Nothing to see here,” is of course what y’all are saying. Given the context, that wears a little thin. “dissuade teachers from teaching science”? “we sponsor the NIPCC to undermine the official United Nation’s IPCC reports”? “This influential audience has usually been reliably anti-climate and it is important to keep opposing voices out.”
Interesting positions for a non-profit to take.
I want to concede a couple of points from Anthony’s rant:
1) I do not begrudge anyone funding for publicly exposing data in an honest and even-handed way. The general incapacity of the scientific institutions for doing so in a reasonable, up-to-date, convenient way is quite a legitimate point of complaint. And Anthony may well do this honestly, because unlike Heartland in general, he appears to “buy his own dog food”. I can imagine how this could be mishandled, but I’m not one for prior restraint.
2) Anthony has a very good point that Gore purportedly has $300 million compared with Heartland’s 5 to 10 million per year. Is Gore’s counter-campaign ineffective, and if so why?
(I don’t think the other “green” groups are especially comparable as they have broader missions. Whether they ought to is another question. For instance, there’s not much percentage in protecting ecosystems under rapid climate change scenarios.)
Both are good topics for further discussion, unlike the stuff that usually passes for science around here. But both of the above are clearly intended to deflect interest from Heartland’s revealed indifference to the facts of the matter, and its as-suspected dubious status as a 501c3.
Anthony,
I think that it is important to note that the furor is about the presentation of data which is in the public domain. How can that be considered in any way an anti-AGW project?
You are being attacked for your name without consideration of the project.
@ Chris Colose Sorry but I see more duping from the AGW fanatics than I see from the other side. There are too many other sites and scientific studies which contradict your pseudo-science to even worry about this site. It really is getting tough watching all your work going down the drain not to speak of those future grants. I never hear how the science is wrong from your crowd only the usual pathetic conspiracy theories
Interesting that in the electronic media age there always seems to be a weasel in the woodpile. Do we now assume that it is no longer possible to carry out any purpose with any degree of confidentiality.
Should we all be required to conduct our entire lives on Facebook. Abolish the private phone call, demand that all face to face meetings have a witness, have all snail mail opened and inspected, have all e-mail routed via FBI servers, have CCTV operating in all public and many private spaces, have only government agencies paying the wages, etc etc.
Welcome to Karl Marx land folks, leave your identity at the door and take a number.
Anthony, just keep doing what you’re doing. Except make mockery of them. Their actions and blatherings are laughable, we should just point and laugh. The dichotomy they hold isn’t something you should bother about. Just like you did, point out the hypocrisy, laugh at them, point at them, continue.
These are funny desperate little creatures who will say and do anything to further their agenda. We all know this, they know this, and now more of the public will see this. Let their shrill screeches hit the ear of the common public.
“The Heartland Institute…is especially known for hosting a series of lavish conferences of climate science doubters at expensive hotels in New York’s Times Square as well as in Washington DC.” Suzanne Goldenberg, The Guardian
You climate change deniers are such cheapskates! The IPCC, UEA, Greenpeace, NOAA, etc., send their people to spartan conferences at modest hotels in Copenhagen, Bali as well as in Cancun.
Stories such as this one are not really expected to discredit WUWT in the eyes of either skeptics or the open minded middle-of-the-roaders. Such stories are intended to give “true believers” a “logical hook” on which to hang their hats in order for them to mindlessly write off facts or theories appearing in WUWT that might conflict with their beliefs. It’s a politicians trick that has been successfully employed since time immemorial to preserve “political base” while the politician attempts to fight his way out of an embarrassing situation.
The irony is that in a pitched battle over which side of the AGW issue receives THE LEAST FUNDING from obvious or suspected self-interested sources, pro-AGW interests would lose in a landslide of epic proportions.
Chris Colose: I am sure you think you are right, but do you agree with James Hansen’s tipping points and 20 feet of sea level rise? How about the Himalayan glaciers gone by 2035? Oh, you don’t? You must be a denier. There is a bait and switch in the debate, where the proven part of the physics (to be kind) only gives 1.3 deg C or so warming, and the feedbacks are unproven. So when Chris says “physics” and “data” the quotes are appropriate. Then, based on handwaving about feedbacks, catastrophe is proclaimed to be out fate, which those of us who know something about trees and crops and animals do not see as likely. Are we forbidden from speaking about what we know by yourself? And the remedies proposed, like windmills, are ludicrous and have potential of serious harm to many via fuel poverty and slowed economic growth.
So when Chris speaks, it is “science” but when anyone disagrees with Chris it is “propaganda”–I don’t think so.
There is no such thing as bad publicity. Whatever you do, do not apologise.
I’d recommend the “Well D’uh?” approach. You saw the need for the new site. were you supposed to foot the bill and do all the work yourself while keeping WUWT going at the same time?
Personally I hope you trousered a good dollop of cash yourself, there is nothing wrong with making money. The journalists pursuing you are trying to justify their fat salaries at your expense, you have no reason to be nice about this.
If I may steal from Lucia:
—————————————————–
In article about Heartland funding by Leo Hickman begins
“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain,” pleaded the Wizard of Oz as Toto revealed the true identity of the man with the big, booming voice to Dorothy and her friends. But it was too late: the illusion was shattered.
And so creates a tone that suggests all that follows is somehow nefarious.
Nestled in this we discover that:
The documents state (pdf) that in January his company ItWorks/IntelliWeather was paid $44,000 to “create a new website devoted to accessing the new temperature data from NOAA’s web site and converting them into easy-to-understand graphs that can be easily found and understood by weathermen and the general interested public”. A total of $88,000 (pdf) is expected to be handed to Watts for the project by the end of 2012.
Given the “Wizard of Oz” introduction, and the choice of verb “handed” I can only suppose that somehow, we are all supposed to read this and be horrified at the thought that someone who hires ItWorks/IntelliWeather to create a product might pay them. But turning to the specifics actually reported I can’t see why I should be horrified.
A website devoted to making NOAA data easy to understand by lay people seems like a good idea. It will take many man-hours to bring it into being. I can’t see any thing remotely shocking that Heartland — a private entity– would pay someone to create such a site. The price of creating this seems reasonable relative to what NOAA would pay NOAA staff if they created it. I don’t see anything remotely shocking that Heartland would pick a private company rather than hunting around for a faculty member to mooonlight doing non-research and non-teaching efforts to do this. I don’t see why anyone would object to Anthony’s company which has experience dealing with Weather data and creating websites accessible to the public being Heartland’s choice.
Hickman continues, suggesting what might be “bad” about it:
This revelation is potentially damaging to Watts as he has previously laughed off the notion that he is being funded by any corporate- and/or vested-interest group. “AGW proponents seem hell bent on trying to repeat this ‘linked to’ nonsense at any cost,” he wrote last May. “Heh, I’ve yet to see that check or any from Exxon-Mobil or any other energy or development company. Somebody must be stealing checks out of my mailbox. /sarc – Anthony.”
Huh? Why should it be damaging to discover that in May 2011, Anthony said he had not received funding, but later in January 2012, he managed to get someone to fund a project for his company? Moreover, it’s clear from the Heartland memo that the funding in 2012 is new. The memo highlights the entry in yellow– indicating this is a new project in 2012.
Is there a rule that Anthony is required to see into the future and know that he will never, ever, ever get funding from Heartland to create a web site? Or that having said he wasn’t getting any in May his company can’t accept a project over 6 months later?
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2012/tell-me-whats-horrible-about-this/
When did Oceanographics (the O in NOAA) become Aeronautics?
thank you for your site Mr Watts
“As for the person who broke into Heartland’s system… I hope they go to jail for this cyber crime.”
Errm, you guys called the HACKER who stole from the CRU a ‘hero’. Whereas in this case it’s been reported as an inside whistleblower. That’s a whole different ball game.
@William Howard M. Connolley says:
February 15, 2012 at 11:14 am
You who ruined Wikipedia for me to use as reference – talk of “spin”?
The head of the IPCC, Dr Rajendra Kumar Pachauri, helped set up a BIG OIL assisting company called GloriOil (name now change). It is a residual oil extraction technology company which assists oil companies to extract the last remaining amounts of oil from oil fields which would otherwise be abandoned. He was its adviser during a period when he was also the head of the IPCC.
I think he is still one of the key executives.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/discussion/comment-permalink/7485884
http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=27919769
Hopefully there is someone in the audience who can talk more in-depth about the politics of the Department of Energy. They are a way for the govt to get more power over the oil industry. Oil may be friends with them in endeavors so one oil buddy can be ‘in’ on the game.
Ken Lay was at DOE in the 1970s – he is credited with at least contributing to the idea of cap-n-trade, if not being the one to come up with the idea and promote it. Later, at Enron, Ken Lay worked to lobby for the original Kyoto Protocol. There is an infamous note from him in Kyoto back to the folks back home about how Kyoto will set up Enron to make money hand-over-fist: Lay wanted to have Enron be “in” on the brokerage – the house always gets a cut.
DOE has had connection with global warming academia since before Mann did his dissertation. Mann had his dissertation, at Yale, funded by DOE. That diss eventually became MBH98, AKA “The Hockey Stick,” The “post-doctoral” fellowship on Mann’s CV, Hollaender Fellowhsip, is from DOE. The fellowship was granted in 1996, and Mann graduated in 1998 – I don’t know how common it is for a diss to be supported by a post-doc funding source.
Mann IMMEDIATELY jumped to his very prominent role in the IPCC. This did not just happen – this path was paved. I don’t know how.
Journalists might want to asl how Mann jumped form being just another geophysicist to being a lead editor of a couple IPCC chapters.
______
We can see Al Gore’s moneyed interest: he is co-founder and co-manager with a couple other guys of “Generation Investment Management,” an investment firm that specializes in helping very big investors buy into the green economy. His investment firm has stopped taking on investors since they have as much assets to manage as they feel they can take on.
http://www.generationim.com/
Journalists might want to investigate the money Al Gore makes by convincing very big investors, both private and public, to let Gore manage their investments. Does his company do this for free, or for a fee? Take a guess. A bit off the top of the earnings on $500 billion is, in my book, a lot more than $44K.
That is why Al Gore can manange to give away ALL proceeds from An Inconvenient Truth. He has not missed a meal, or a massage.
Giving away the proceeds of AIT is not so noble when you see how big his bank acct must be, with the commission checks from GIM.
When journalists DO ask about this “prophet motive,” Gore has gotten defensive.
But will journalists stop asking, or go pursue the story about hundreds of billions versus $44k?
As a classic progressive, Gore believes in twisting the truth, and suppressing truth. He has some controlling role in Google; it is well-documented that when ClimateGate 1 broke, Google search would not autocomplete “climategat” eve nthough it was a huge search term. This suppression of Google search results story itself went viral, basically forcing Google to quit suppressing auto-complete for “climategat.”
_______
Sure, the surfacestations effort COULD be in actuality a biased story to hide truth and support Big Oil.
If so, anyone of us can replicate surfacestations. Just start going out and documenting these temp sites, and see how your results come out. It is a free country.
If I declare the U.S. pop to be 200 million, you can go find the U.S. census data and show me to be wrong. This is the benefit of transparent, accessible data. Truth wins out over rhetoric that is a distortion of truth.
Until a few years ago, I had no firm opinion on AGW. THen, I started reading articles such as MBH98, and surfacestations website.
It was not too long until I decided the evidence for AGW was 1. sketchy, and 2. had a lot of profit-motive behind it.
Journalists can go do the same. Investigate. Any journalist can go read all the info that GIM posts.
They can ask Mann for his emails, and answers, like Watts is being asked. THey can ask Mann how he jumped from recent grad to IPCC chapter editor in no time. That story will not be in the UVA emails, but in the Yale emails.
Anthony can have his little bit of fame and the proceeds from the dying fossil fuel industry. But, if they care for value for money, what are they getting? Someone that claims the surface record is tainted by UHI? Wrong. Some one that claims there’s no warming at all? Wrong. Someone that claims the signal is buried in the uncertainties? Wrong. Some one that puts up a post that shows multiple graphics that demonstrate a long term trend of AGW but then tries to argue the last dozen points are the death nell for solid science? Fail.
Tell me one little bit of science Anthony has contributed?
If I were them, I’d be asking for my money back.
They can pay Anthony all they like but reality is, the world is still warming, AGW still has to be dealt with and the flat-earth society communing here will one day deny they ever knew Anthony
Watts like the Judases they are.
REPLY: Here’s the science:
Link to the paper (final print quality), Fall et al 2011 here
Fall et all 2011 supplementary information here
Media Resource – download PDF here
– Anthony
Chris Colose says:
February 15, 2012 at 10:36 am
Look…he’s back from GISS! Too afraid to talk about Model E no doubt…or the millions in climate research dollars GISS is sucking from the taxpayers…
Anthony –
If you are being completely honest about the fact that the money would only go to a website and maintenance thereof (which I have no reason to doubt, but I don’t know you personally, no offense meant), then I’d say that any attacks against you are completely unsubstantiated and that you have done no wrong. Some of these other individuals seem to be more “funded” than you are, however, and it is worth investigating – though anyone complaining about Soon’s $125 a month has got to be kidding me.
Related to the “teaching science” line. That’s got to be a typo. I can’t imagine any world where the person types that knowingly. It is almost perfectly crafted to give a talking point to the opposition.
kim2ooo — You have a lot of Chutzpah saying I should provide a complete quotation at this website considering how the climategate emails were addressed here. That said, I don’t see a signifiacnt, material difference between my abbreviated quotation and yours. Please enlighen us.
If the Heartland budget is real, it appears that the organizations controlled by Anthony Watts, are getting $44,000 annually in Heartland funding… Watts has always denied he was getting fossil fuel industry money. And of course, we already knew he was getting money from a Fox News affiliate in the past.
$88,000 Surface Stations Project
Payments to ItWorks/IntelliWeather to create web site featuring data from NOAA’s new network of surface stations. First payment of $44,000 in January, second of same amount contingent on fundraising around mid-year.
Also Heartland published his fallacious report claiming that the temperature records were changed by “dropping” stations in the past… I wonder how much money, or non-monetary compensation Watts got from Heartland for that piece of propaganda?
Shouldn’t someone ask Anthony Watts to come clean on how much Heartland funding, travel expenses, publishing expenses, conference fees etc., he has gotten and accepted?
Michael Tobis says:
February 15, 2012 at 11:37 am
OK Michael. Let’s stop all government funding for “dubious” climate “research” projects, and Anthony will stop receiving funds from the Heartland Institute. That sounds fair to me.
For everyone’s reading pleasure…
Billions in government Climate Ca$h for the arrogant climate elites:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/FY12-climate-fs.pdf
Barry Woods said: “A website devoted to making NOAA data easy to understand by lay people seems like a good idea.”
To most people, yes. But to AGW alarmists, not so much. Think about the resistance the Catholic Church had to Bibles being printed in anything but Latin. They didn’t want the unwashed masses able to read scripture directly for themselves, they wanted them to have to come to the priests for the knowledge. To ensure they “got it right” and coincidentally keep the priests in a position of power and able to tell the masses what to do. Similar issue here, it’s less a science than a religion sadly.
Why, if you were able to see the real data, simply presented, sans “adjustments” and commentary from the AGW clergy as to what it all means, in a nice predigested press release.
Ah, the entire climate strategy document is fake. Delightful.
Heartland:
“focus on providing curriculum that shows that the topic of climate change is controversial and uncertain – two key points that are effective at dissuading teachers from teaching science.”
Yes keep them stupid! Do not reveal the truth about global warming. Hide the facts behind curtains of “candy science” t o be found every day on misleading websites fully paid by fossile fuel diggers.
William M. Connolley says:
February 15, 2012 at 11:14 am
The flagship of Greenpeace that was sunken by the French secret service was replaced thanks to a donation of a billionnaire (and later again by the French government). Rumours are going around that this was one of the owners of Phillip Morris. Of course, Greenpeace doesn’t receive any donations from Big Tobacco or other companies…
Shawn Halayka says:
February 15, 2012 at 10:51 am
Was this when you were living in your parent’s basement? $44,000 isn’t very much money unless you’re buying a watch. I wouldn’t be interested in starting such an ambitious project for which I wasn’t being paid. I’m just not that stupid.
Oh, sorry Anthony. I meant dedicated. Time to go to the tip jar 😉
Horray! There are two sides to the climate debate!
Odd that the Guardian has only just noticed, maybe as ‘journalists’ they might want to ‘investigate’ how much the green industry and green politicos pour into the AGW cash bucket.
They might also want to explain why they appear to endorse the closing down of scientific debate and are instead happy to tolerate a totalitarian view of science as espoused by a number of AGW supporters.
“”””” “Corruption is not the same as conspiracy, you understand. Conspiracy is the act of conniving immorally or illegally with others to get your bread buttered. Corruption is simply knowing which side your bread is already buttered on.”
– L. Neil Smith “””””
So where did you come up with the idea that “conspiracy” is necessarily, either “immoral” or “illega”l, or that it constitutes “conniving”. Conspiracy is simply people or persons or organisations getting together to plan some joint strategy, aimed at benefitting (hopefully) some common interest they may have. Happens all the time, as a standard operation of businesses of all kinds, or governmental bodies such as the US Congress. Different parties to the conspiracy have different interests or emphases on their interests, and collectively they negotiate some procedure or course of action that is acceptable to all.
Goes by all kinds of names; “strategy sessions”, “business plans”, “white papers”, you name it.
Yes it is SOP for outsiders who are not privy to the conspiracy procedings, to assume that it must be some nefarious purpose, since they are kept in the dark; as in it is none of their business; so they use the “conspiracy” term as a derogatory comment.
These days, so many people have no visible means of earning a living doing honest work, they figure they can advise others on how to do their work, whether their advice is either needed or wanted.
Now in matters funded by the tax paying people; other than matters of national security, the people have a right to know what they are getting or learning from their tax contributions.
Don’t let yourself be fooled by this or any such action Anthony. As many other say, please continue to do what you did, point at them and the false science.
As Jo Nova said, skeptics are winning:
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/02/we-are-winning-eh-part-4-or-so/
Speaking of Jo, I think she is right again, lets do talk about money:
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/02/logic-gate-the-smog-blog-exposes-irrational-rage-innumeracy-and-heartlands-efficient-success/
Phil Clarke says:
February 15, 2012 at 11:17 am
An anonymous multmillionaire is funding the suppression of science teaching in your country. How is this not headline news?
————————
Actually, the suppression came from the other side. I was forced to buy an “Incontinent Truth” at my school.
No, I didn’t misspell 😉
Not surprisingly, the misinformation on WUWT “misinformation” is spreading like wildfire.
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2012/02/leaked-docs-heartland-institute-think-tank-pays-climate-contrarians-very-well.ars
Why is it that several commenters have said it would be ok for Mr. Watts to accept Heartland money as long as it wasn’t for himself? (ie for servers and a programmer) Can someone’s facts only be valid if he is totally unpaid? What about every single proponent of global warming? I do believe they are mostly paid quite well as gov employees.
Tell us Anthony, did you become a skeptic before or after the funding? No need to answer I already know you were sceptical before. No change there then.
Keep up the good work and I hope you get lots more FUNDING from Heartland and other concerned organisations; concerned that people are being swindled in the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the human race.
Hateful comments? Your blog has been a haven form those posting hate material against honest scientists for years and you have willfully provided a platform for them.
The comments are littered with abuse of scientists and claims of them presenting a science based on making money.
And you have openly claimed not to have taken money from these sources previously on this blog, Anthony. You have been dishonest.
[Reply: Anthony is not dishonest. He has stated that this is his first grant, so you owe him an apology for libel. And what you call “abuse” is free speech. As opposed to blogs like RealClimate, which heavily censors scientific views they disagree with. ~dbs, mod.]
Keep Calm and Carry On. I am confident this hullabaloo will shake out to your advantage.
The “teaching science” quote is an obvious piece of ungrammatical sloppy writing, which I suspect should have read “teaching that the science is settled” or some such. However, it is now going to be very hard to prove this ,if it is the case, to everyone’s satisfaction!
Everything else I have seen so far is ,basically, unremarkable and exactly what I would have thought, deep down, all sides of this debate would have expected to have seen.
Much ado about nothing.
Thanks, Anthony. We will be all using your project, when done. Even the alarmists will.
There are some folks responding here who clearly have never run a software project and have no apparent basis for their SWAGS and their crude suggestions that Anthony is somehow lying. Given that the average salary in Silicon Valley is now $100K, it is a good bet that you are not going to find a competent and qualified freelance programmers for much less than $100/hr. Assuming 50% of the budget is for design/programming/db then you are looking at about 200 hrs or 5 weeks. You are going to be very lucky to get this designed,tested, implemented and documented in that time period. If you off-shored it, we used programmers in Nepal, you might lower it somewhat but the costs of the inevitable miscommunications on this type of project can be very high. We did lots of survey and interactive reporting work and, even with our Nepalese programmers, we needed to charge $150 per hr. plus for the work. Good luck with the project.
I fixed this phrase for you by adding the word “junk”, KarIL.
[snip – policy]
Heartland said:
“But honest disagreement should never be used to justify the criminal acts…”
—–
So Heartand is also strongly condemning the actions of those who released the Climategate emails?
“John Mason says:
February 15, 2012 at 11:29 am
88k for a website is the astonishing bit WRT Surface Stations. I know loads of people who could have done it for wayyy under that! As to the rest, guess we shall have to see….
REPLY: Actually it is $44K, and the phase 2 to keep it running may/may not be funded. Try hiring a good programmer for a year and purchasing the relevant equipment for $44K – Anthony”
$44K including app dev with a server and backup solution? Maybe you could work with us. A straight pizza box server with SCSI RAID runs at 10k. Cheap, server class, tape backup only just gets interesting at once you go past $1k. And cheap contract development is $25/hr. The market for contract runs at $50 usually. Then there is rack space, cabling (pulling a cable is $100), domain space, and bandwidth (commerical sites still get soaked).
@Craig lohle – No, but if you’re going to fight an ideological war, you need to keep your motives beyond reproach. Which, of course, Anthony has done.
Also, read the press release everyone, the damning document is faked.
Had a quick look at the documents and I don’t see much to write about. “Shock : Organisation found doing what it was set up to do” (which is probably a news item on its own).
It is interesting watching “The Guardian” attempt to find something “juicy” while having ignored the likes of FoE, Greenpeace and hundreds of other carbon scammers for twenty years. Now private documents from Deutsche Bank or Goldman concerning the EU $100+ billion carbon trading scam – those I would pay to view.
While it is obviously not my in-box filling up with questions (and much else too I’ll wager) I would recommend that you spend the least amount of time possible dealing with this non event.
But honest disagreement should never be used to justify the criminal acts and fraud… Those persons who posted these documents and wrote about them before we had a chance to comment on their authenticity should be ashamed of their deeds, and their bad behavior should be taken into account when judging their credibility now and in the future.
Good point, but only if you are as critical of those who stole e-mails for use from the CRU during ClimateGate and then used quotes from those e-mails out of context and without consultation with the researchers. If not, then please refrain from such hypocritical wish wash.
[snip – policy]
Now you will need more help to moderate this site.
The ones like Exp will post comments that will have to be deleted.
As you delete them keep them where you can show it later as evidence.
They will use the delets to make false claims.
Media Matters will come lurking soon also.
RE: I’m surprised at the number of articles out there on this where journalists have not bothered to ask me for a statement, but rather rely on their own opinion.
———————————
It seems to me that reporting has become less and less about facts and more and more about their opinion.
In my opinion, this is excellent news! Considering that a small amount of money is revealing more scientific facts than those produced by many billions of dollars, we can only appreciate the ROI for these investments.
For, it’s not embarrassing to receive money for work being excellently done!
Ecotretas
Phil C says:
February 15, 2012 at 11:52 am
kim2ooo — You have a lot of Chutzpah saying I should provide a complete quotation at this website considering how the climategate emails were addressed here. That said, I don’t see a signifiacnt, material difference between my abbreviated quotation and yours. Please enlighen us.
———————————-
1 Big difference “Climategate emails” were verified.
2 We already know some of this leak is a hoax according to Heartland [ Read update above ]
BUT taking what sentence you used as a quote in whole
“His effort will focus on providing curriculum that shows that the topic of climate change is controversial and uncertain – two key points that are effective at dissuading teachers from teaching science.”
Reread the sentence in whole. it is the lack of “controversy and uncertainty” being taught in schools – that dissuade NORMAL SCIENCE from being taught in schools,
“You have a lot of Chutzpah” Yeppers!!!!!!!!!!!!! 😉
Well Let me say this.
Anthony’s site got the climategate mails on Nov 17th
Anthony had these concerns that he asked me to help him with.
1. were the documents real.
2. was it legal to redistribute them.
From nov 17th to nov 19th I worked to see if I could find any signs of fakery.
I called steve mcIntyre to read him mails he had sent that showed up in the stack.
they were real. I argued with charles and Anthony and said this was proof they were real.
Anthony refused to accept this. So did charles.
I read the entire stack. Still Anthony wanted to be sure and check with lawyers.
I asked Tom Fuller to check with his lawyers. They said, without any word from CRU
we were on shakey ground.
On thursday nov 19th, we learned of a mail from CRU/UEA that alerted staff that mails
were posted. That was the confirmation we needed.
looks like desmog should have been more skeptical.
Also, we worried about the mails containing some false mails. Looks like that may have
happened to desmog
Exp ( February 15, 2012 at 11:51 am) says:
“Anthony can have his little bit of fame and the proceeds from the dying fossil fuel industry.”
Check your facts; the fossil fuel industry is alive and well. Oil and other hydrocarbon (i.e. fossil fuel) consumption is rising worldwide. The low-hanging fruit may be gone, but new techniques are opening up huge potentials. Centuries of coal remain. Natural gas is at an historic price disconnect (especially in North America) from oil specifically because horizontal fracking technology has dramatically lowered costs, a technology that will also extend the life of many oil fields. We have hydrocarbons for centuries if we so wish.
I loved the few alarmist comments here, because they say everything about the CAGW cult.
Just because someone points out the facts and spends $x, then this is evil rubbish. While the other side takes the same facts, distorts the crap out of them, then spends >$2,000x on ‘research’, promotion, salaries etc and wonders why they are steadily losing the argument.
These alarmists essentially argue “How dare anyone give Anthony $44K to set up a website, when this money could have been much better spent by a member of the Team on advertising, distorting climate models, influencing impressionable children or something else equally important.
If nothing else, it helps demonstrate that ‘Big Oil’ funds alarmism and not scepticism, solely because it is the trendy poiltic thing to do. It also helps illustrate the huge difference in funding between sceptics and alarmists – the figure I used here of >2,000 times is probably far too low.
One day WUWT will be recognised for what it really is – a bastion of scientific sanity and realism in an increasingly corrupt scientific world.
Well, several points…
First off: Anthony, that’s ALL you got? For that kind of project? Wow, you run an efficient shop!
A single CISCO router can cost more than that.
Second: Now folks know why I’m so hard to reach via email. Never saw much reason to generate a load of fodder for lawyers, Yellow Journalists, and political fishing expeditions. (That said, I guess I’ll go check my email again and see what folks have sent to me)
Third: Remember that tertiary oil recovery works best with “liquid CO2 injection” into old “spent” oil wells. The “problem” is that buying liquid CO2 is expensive. Now if the Oil Companies could get the COAL Companies saddled with the cost of providing them liquid CO2 for ‘stripper wells’, they would make a bundle… So not a surprise that oil companies FUND WARMERS that then demonise coal; AND constantly demand “sequestration” of coal plant CO2. Exxon in particular has a document (that I can’t find at the moment but have linked to in the past) bemoaning that they had run out of cheap CO2 and needed to pay too much for it…
Fourth: In the spirit of “full disclosure”, I, too, have had “funding” from outside sources. I got $1000 one time from one donor. It came AFTER I’d done the port of GIStemp (and before I did all those graphs using the dT/dt method that showed various months having different trends; neighboring countries having opposing trends, etc.).
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/category/dtdt/
At about the same time, Anthony gave me an old COMPAQ Evo desktop computer (used, but well loved) and with OpenOffice on it, so I could make decent graphs. I’d estimate the market value of it at less than $200. Still: Thanks, Anthony, it made all those dT/dt graphs and more.
I’ve also had a few dozens of donations from folks at my web site directly, mostly in $10 to $20 sizes from just a few dedicated readers. Oh, and another bogger picked up my air fair and hotel to go to Chicago for the Heartland sponsored climate conference (for which I am again highly grateful… it was the highpoint experience of my ‘global warming’ experience). All told I put it at somewhere near, but likely under, $2000. That’s over several years of work. I figure that’s about the dinner bill for one NIGHT by someone like Hansen or AlGore on the government dime / dollar / kilobucks.
(Why no names on those donors? I do not have their permission, having not talked to any of them in months. Or years.)
Frankly, the complete LACK of any ability to generate funding is why I ended up taking a contract on the other side of the country (doing project management for an entertainment company) to keep beans and rice on the table. I had hoped to, by demonstrating skill and understanding via porting GISTemp, catch the eye of folks with money. What I found out was that there were no folks with buckets of money; just a little bit, and it was being closely managed.
While I would love nothing more than to be running a data center making clean climate / weather / temperature data, or even doing research into the (IMHO bogus) ways it is manipulated by the Hadley Center / NCDC / NASA GISS: They get money in the $Hundreds of $Billions (over years) and on this side it’s $1000 in 3 years and a free lunch…
It is very clear that the strategy of parasitizing government via NGOs and NSF grants is far more effective at sucking in the cash for the ‘warmers’; while living on legitimate ‘hand outs’ from private donors will ALMOST cover the cost of coffee… (At an average of $333 / year, and with $10 / can for coffee, that’s one can a week and 1/2, if I make it myself… Or about 1 Starbucks a day if I buy it… )
Also in full disclosure:
I really really wish I could “embrace the dark side” and just chuck my sense of honesty in the bucket. I’m pretty sure I could be rolling in dough very quickly just by lining up with that NGO, Government Trough, Oil Funding, AlGore Machine side of things. But I can’t. “The truth just is. -E.M.Smith” and I can’t change the truth. So like it or not, I’m stuck on the side of poverty and truth. (Maybe we need a ‘Skeptics Monastery’ 😉
So there you go, Warmers, feel free to now tar me with the brush of “FUNDED!!!!” I’m sure you can find a way…
(The irony of it is that a full search of email archives by Warmers is likely to cost more than the actual funding provided. An amusing factoid…)
Warmists. Home goal. Typical.
Why on earth would you publice data from NOAA (aeronautics according to Heartland, if they even do not know where NOAA stands for, what could they know about physics?)
if they – NOAA – publish these data themselves. What about the remark about stations too close to buildings etc. These stations are already taken out of data bases to calculate world averaged temperatures. Besides USA is just a small part on the world, do you think that everywhere on this earth temperature measurements are doen too close too buildings or black roads?
Let me guess about these reader friendly graphically presentations: outliers will be out and outliers are stations with higher temperature readings than expected in comparsion with the average temperatures of these stations. It is so obvious what the goal is of this data handling.
Some text is on paper but some text is just spoken and only few know these words.
[Reply: You say: “Let me guess about these reader friendly graphically presentations: outliers will be out and outliers are stations with higher temperature readings than expected in comparsion with the average temperatures of these stations. It is so obvious what the goal is of this data handling.” You are confusing Anthony, who I know to be completely honest, with various government bureaucrats and university types who do exactly what you “guess” Anthony would do. ~dbs, mod.]
@ Chris Colose
If we are all being duped by things like the sea level post why doesnt anyone from the AGW crowd ever undupe us. No, all we get is a lot of pedantic, shrill whines from the pseudo-scientists that never add to the science but rather just a lot of personal attacks. Some science
In the end Anthony’s project will be judged by the facts. I’ll suggest a totally open approach to the budget , schedule, and design process. There’s nothing to hide and take an opportunity to show
people how openness works. Show the IPCC how to take comments. let folks review it. Build it in the open. Just a thought.
Haaa, Haaa, Haaaa, Haaaa!
$6.5 million?
Mice nuts!
How much was spend getting all the attendees to that last conference in S. Africa?
$40K for a web site?
Must be a cheap date!
Who ever heard of that cheap a web site having any glitz!
Must be hard data site, no glamor, just the facts or no one would look at it!
On the other hand, isn’t it amazing what the minions of the AGW religion will do to preserve their their access to the public till!
LOL in Oregon
I hope this story gets wide publicity: all these warmist hysterics at the shock/horror discovery that the evil Heartland has an annual budget of $6.5m (c.f. Greenpeace’s measly $310m) and has the temerity to actually fund people who share its views. Why are these well-heeled warmists so concerned about a tiny, ill-funded organisation? It illustrates perfectly their lack of confidence in the validity of their claims and in the real strength of their position.
And as Heartland is, I believe, the only body of any significance promoting CAGW scepticism, this torpedoes those assertions about “a well-funded, highly organised denial machine”. Is Big Oil asleep – where’s the massive funding?
Hi Anthony,
do people think you do all the work you do on fresh air? I go with the theory that once the sums involved become known then the ranks of scepticism will grow.
Have you seen this (via Bishop Hill) your $44K pales into insignificance against the UK university funding; £1 = $1.57 so the funding is over $100 million.
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2012/02/13/uk-universities-receive-72-million-p-a-for-climate-research/
How do we know these documents were stolen? The word of the “victim”? Didn’t UEA-CRU claim theft too?
I didn’t believe UEA-CRU and I don’t believe Heartland either. This sounds like the work of an insider either angry with Heartland or a conscientious whistle blower.
Consistency, people. Don’t add hypocrisy and double standards to the list of things the other side will take up for their attacks.
I’m all for throwing Heartland and cohorts under the bus. The funding for Heartland is almost certainly going to dry up anyway so it’s no additional loss and a good way to save some face. Not maintaining the anonymity of donors who were promised it is incompetent and won’t be tolerated. Nobody gets a second chance with the same donors after screwing up that badly. New donors will be scared off. Whowever was milking this cow is going to have find other means of paying the bills going forward.
Watts:
> “Show me where “fossil fuel money” is involved, provide a citation.”
What are you talking about?! Have you not read the leaked documents from Heartland?! Do you not know they are funded from fossil fuel money?
Or are you simply pretending that because the money is paid to you via Heartland rather than directly from the Kochs then it is no longer ‘dirty’ money? That would be disingenuous, at best.
> “the Climate Research Unit in the UK is funded by…”
Another weak attempt at distracting from the fact that you have accepted money that originates from the fossil industry via an organization that wants to shut out opposing opinions and stop science teachers from teaching science. Have you no integrity?
REPLY: And again, provide a citation that shows I’ve accepted fossil fuel money. At the same time explain why it is OK for the CRU to get funding from BP, Shell, and the DOE – Anthony
I suppose it goes without saying that the subject article in the Guardian by Suzanne Goldenberg lacks journalistic objectivity. Her repeated choice of adjectives and phrases throughout the entire article flag this as an editorial opinion, not a news report. Maybe that is what was intended.
I had to go over to the guardien article. Pathetic. Writting like it is a so aweful to get funding. Compared to billions funding CO2 will kill us? Laughable. I had to write their email as to how pathetic it was.
Anthony, considering Dr. Hansen’s response, should you not lay off the “growing financial scandal” business? You can legitimately criticize his activism and its influence on his science without resorting to smears like that.
Grasping at straws and in doing so exposing what a bunch of utter hypocrites they really are.
If they really were the bunch of touchy-feely bleeding heart Bambi loving think of the children caring socialist types they crack themselves up to be, they would help fund the sceptic position themselves. They would realise that such support and egalitarianism would reinforce their message/position.
But no.
They go all out on a grasping, money driven and self serving agenda that reveals their true colours.
Gawd help us -because as is being revealed – warmista only help themselves.
Ohhhhh, a Seth Borenstein alert.
Can’t wait to see that “impartial and balanced” story.
Same goes for the Palin leak. Now, please contact the UK police and inform then that is was a hack and not a leak.
kim2ooo —
This is all I’m asking:
1. Define “controversy” and “uncertainty” as it applies to K-12 natural sciences education
2. Define “Normal Science” as it applies to K-12 natural sciences education
Craig Loehle says:
February 15, 2012 at 10:59 am
Yeah, it is expensive to put out propaganda, but cheap to tell the truth (you terrible person you). Thank God we live in the Internet age.
THE QUOTE OF THE DAY !!
It’s not hypocrisy, Duke of Oil – Heartland has explained exactly how the documents were obtained. It wasn’t “a hacker”, it was “the person who called and faked their identity”. It’s basic social engineering, it happens all the time. There’s no real reason to not believe their story. I mean, they COULD be lying, but nothing in their behavior suggests it.
@ Craig Loehle
Nice to see you here, but your post disappoints.
I’ve read your name in the documents and would like to here a comment of you if it’s true that you’ve got money from Heartland.
It speaks volumes for Leo Hickman’s and DeSmogBlog’s credibility and journalistic ethics, not to mention their veracity, to learn that the document/s they built this entire piece of childish and vituperative nonsense from is a fake! And all of that hatred spilling from the Hickman’s idiotic followers is illuminating, if not terribly enlightening.
Duke of Oil says:
February 15, 2012 at 12:27 pm
Anthony, is this our theif ?,
@ Anthony
It’s true, that Heartland has up to know one donor (Anonymous Donor), giving $44,000 for your project. But if I’ve read correctly the documents, Heartland pledged $88,000 for your project and hopes to find further donors for the other 44,000.
Koos says:
February 15, 2012 at 11:53 am
You have no right to be informed of anything a private person does with private money. Only those providing the money have that right. For those using public funds, we the taxpayers all have the right to know what our money is being spent on and what the results of that spending are because it is we the taxpayers that are providing the money.
The AGW posters will not use facts, they will not respond to the facts presented by those here.
Approach this understanding how they fight. You will wear your fingers to the bone typing in facts only to have the subject changed, a personal attack on you or your grammar as a response, or any number of misdirections. Its all they have as they passed the fact check sign long ago.
So, the leaker, has unintentionally brought to the fore, the baser instincts of the CAGW religion.
Or, was it all just counter-espionage ?
No matter, result the same.
I do feel sorry for Anthony, being stuck in the middle once again 🙁
Very interesting – looking at the Heartland Institute, they claim that the “Strategy” document is a fake. I’m finding that a bit hard to believe. Why?
Anthony Watts has confirmed the $44,000 already generated by the HI for his website (which, incidentally, is quite reasonable for that level of effort), and the goal of $90,000. Bob Carter has confirmed that he has received monies as well. Both of these are in agreement with the “Strategy” document – and as such confirmations of content.
From having looked at the strategy .PDF, it is clearly a scanned document, from hardcopy. I would suspect that it’s real.
—
I would find it hard to support a group that supports “…providing curriculum that shows that the topic of climate change is controversial and uncertain – two key points that are effective at dissuading teachers from teaching science.” Or that has spends hundreds of thousands to “…undermine the official United Nation’s IPCC reports…”. Those are not the actions of a group who believes the data supports them.
REPLY: Actually two things show it is fake.
1. Heartland confirms they do all communications with Board members electronically, not with printed pages.
2. The $90K figure is wrong, and not repeated in any other documents. my budget numbers were based on specific budget costs. Yet the fake doc rounds up to $90,000, a sign of trying to inflate the issue.
– Anthony
Stay strong Anthony.
This is more proof of how successful you have become. And, in the end, it’s a way to get some free publicity for the project…..
I’ve also just made a donation.
Compare and contrast the funding. This really is David V Goliath.
DAVID
US government funding for skeptical scientists $ 0
Heartland Institute $6.4m (a shockingly high figure)
GOLIATH
NSW climate change $750m
US government funding for climate science and technology $7,000m
I propose government funding for sceptical scientists, that should end this kind of hullabaloo once and for all. But nooooooooooooooooooo because the science is settled despite 15 years of a temperature standstill. A deceleration in the rate of sea level rise. The curious return of snow in recent years which was just a thing of the past. Even on Tunisia’s desert for goodness sake.
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/02/logic-gate-the-smog-blog-exposes-irrational-rage-innumeracy-and-heartlands-efficient-success/
Anthony,
I read much of the post but did not see an answer to this question: Were you going to disclose the funding when the website was launched? Sorry if it that was answered and I missed it.
REPLY: Sure, when the new website is launched, it will show how it all came together, but that’s still months ahead – Anthony
It was fascinating to read how the Heartland documents (faked/altered and others) prove, once and for all, that the Earth’s climate sensitivity is so high and dominated by positive feedbacks that the human race is doomed due to CO2.
\sarc
I wonder if all this jumping around by the alarmists will precipitate the release of the password for the remaining Climategate emails?
Perhaps Lefebvre will pull (his rumored) funding from desmog, now, lest his own reputation be further eroded.
I’m thrilled Anthony gets funding of any kind!
I vaguely recall that the comment was made well BEFORE the funding. In which way is that dishonest. Example: I have never been to China (true). Tomorrow I get on a plane and go to China. Am I being dishonest?
KarlL says:
February 15, 2012 at 12:28 pm
And have you no brains?
Do you eat food that is produced by energy that “originates from the fossil industry”?
Do you live in a house that is produced by energy that “originates from the fossil industry”?
Do you drive a car that a) comes from raw materials, b) was built and delivered, and c) uses energy that “originates from the fossil industry”?
Do you use a computer and internet that is powered by energy that “originates from the fossil industry”?
If your answer is “Yes” to any of the above, then you are an absolute hyprocite (and brainless because you’ve given it no thought).
If your answer is “No” to all the above, then we’ll just call you Fred Flinstone and ask how living in a fantasy works for you.
The reason this is assymetrical warfare is because regardless of how much money the CAGW side spends, it doesn’t change the truth. Period.
TheFlyingOrc says:
February 15, 2012 at 10:53 am
Anthony, could you say that 100% of the money would go towards setting up the website, and 0% in your pocket? I think it is probably reasonable if this is not the case, but if it IS the case, that’s a very powerful argument against it.
==========================
Dear Orc, please explain the “powerfull” case against it if Anthony accepted any funding for his personal time. He has created a web site that attracts millions of hits supplying factual knowldege not articulated in the MSM. If, as a result of this, his time is rewarded financially, and enables a better more informative product what is the problem?
Koos,
Are you involved with science education?
I’ve as a volunteer for over 16 years and I can honestly say that I wouldn’t let some of the people over at sks or RC anywhere near a classroom of kids. They are preachers not educators. Any good teacher wouldn’t allow the term “climate change” in a science course. In Government, Social Studies, Ethics, or related courses, sure. But not a science class. Climate change is not a science subject, it is a political and policy one. Math, physics, chemistry, biology, etc are science topics.
What if it was leaked by a whistleblower? They have protection under UK law I understand so there would be no crime to act against.
“The scheme includes spending $100,000 for spreading the message in K-12 schools that “the topic of climate change is controversial and uncertain”
And $80,000 was spent spreading the message that 1+1=2.
$200,000 spent spreading the message that gravity acts downwards.
A massive $300,000 spent spreading the message that water is wet.
How could anyone with a brain possibly teach that climate change is not controversial and uncertain?
“oldgamer56 says:
February 15, 2012 at 10:16 am
Anthony,
Stay strong. Journalists today are like a pack of coyotes, they only attack in packs and only if they sense weakness. Total transparency and the truth is your best weapons.
Kaboom says:
February 15, 2012 at 10:19 am
One could actually only hope for this story to get wide traction, if only to juxtapose the tiny budget of Heartland against the opinion buying machines on the other side of the argument.”
We have a long way to go to change public perception and are fighting an uphill battle with today’s complete lack of real journalism and a left leaning press corps. Example:
I listen to NPR to keep on top of what the “enemy” is promulgating. This morning there was a brief item on “fashion”. In this piece NPR noted that although coats had been “out of fashion” for some time “probably due to global warming” they were again becoming more popular. One of the factors they noted for the US was the “improving economy”.
I noted that though this little diatribe covered both US and European fashion, and global warming was mentioned, no mention was was made of the extreme cold being endured right now in Europe and the possibility that global warming was no longer an issue there, or that folks over there might be buying an extra coat to wear to bed.
So, NPR got in a plug for the Obama administration regarding the supposed improving economy is spite of the fact of the vast underemployment and falsification of the unemployment stats being used which do not count people who have given up looking for work. Plus a plug for global warming all in a fashion article!
This is an example of the insidious nature of of the propaganda being constantly used by the left to bombard the the public in our country and imbue in them the proper leftists opinions.
“Anthony, I am loathe to think that there are nefarious schemes and whatnot at play here, but really… $44,000 to write software that analyses data? I made that much in an entire year as a professional programmer. It took me a day to write up …”
44K for a website is a lot. 44K for an entire research project, of which a website is only a part, is a pittance. And 44k for a research project that has the backing of a blog that reaches the millions of people reached by WUWT is an absolute steal! You can buy a script kiddy writing rubbish code for 44k a year. You cannot get a software engineer, meteorologist, project manager and promoter with the experience and global public reach of Anthony Watts for 44K for very long.
Importantly, what is being produced is NOAA data, unadjusted just presented better and clearer. As stated, NOAA should be doing this anyway. Unlike the very very well paid warmists, Mr Watts is not being hired to fudge, adjust or bend the data to fit a political argument.
Hi Anthony,
Love your blog, I don’t give a damn about your receiving funding for a special project. I’ll continue visiting, and reading because there are precious few resources out there that present contrary viewpoints, and evidence to ‘accepted science’. WUWT is one of the better resources that do.
What if it was leaked by a whistleblower? They have protection under UK law I understand so there would be no crime to act against.
Now some of you angry posters need to realise that at least one of the key documents is fake.
Severian @ 11:57 AM : “Why, if you were able to see the real data, simply presented, sans “adjustments” and commentary from the AGW clergy as to what it all means, in a nice predigested press release.”
It took over 100 comments, but I think you finally touched on the why of their over the top reaction: They don’t want the general public to know what a sorry state the temperature monitoring stations are in and how they have been moving into the UHI for the last half century, artificially jacking up temperatures. Once Anthony and Heartland goes live with this, not only do we see the actual site locations and the actual data, but more importantly we see where the sites are not located (Arctic, mountains, Antarctic, etc) – places where cooling would show up early and often.
Congratulations to Anthony and Heartland. The truth is the ultimate weapon in this fight. Cheers-
Is anyone else wondering if “FOIA” will take this opportunity to release the key to the remaining Climategate 2 E-mails?
Peter says:
February 15, 2012 at 11:09 am
I love the way you use the fact free, propaganda driven campaigns against second hand smoke and CFC’s as the standard by which you want to be measured.
William M. Connolley says:
February 15, 2012 at 11:14 am
Lots of fun, eh? “effort will focus on providing curriculum that shows that the topic of climate change is controversial and uncertain – two key points that are effective at dissuading teachers from teaching science” is nice, though I note that the attempts to spin this are already starting.
——————————————————————
Mr Connolley, get real. At the most this was sloppy writing and the author meant to say …”from teaching “BAD” science. (You know like Mann’s broken hockey stick and all the non peer review IPCC alarmist literature since proven false)
Connolley goes on
Heartland’s statement that “no more than 5% of total budget from a single corporate entity” now looks to have been very carefully crafted, now we know that 20% came from a single individual!
————————————- SO??? God bless him.
Connolley swings and misses again, but thinks its a home run-
“At present we sponsor the NIPCC to undermine the official United Nation’s IPCC reports” is also pleasantly honest – no pretence there of actually doing any real science.
————————————————————————————-
The NIPCC use professional science literature and articles, not non peer review IPCC alarmist literature since proven false. Your view that is is not real science does not make it so. The earth was just as round before mankind proved it. CO2 is a benefit to the biosphere, and does not produce catestrophic warming, despite your blind passion that it does.
The hypocrisy here is amazing. Certain groups have certainly conspired to breach FOIA in order to hide the data, methodologies and reproducibility of their results. And they have done so using public funds. But the Repeaters (“journalists” sic) focus on a privately funded project which is entirely open concerning the methodology and data which is to receive a paltry $44K of PRIVATE capital.
Compare that to the immense funding for the Universities and Institutions such as NOAA who recently sent a “anonymous” (laughs) survey to their staff to find out what amounts to their a political view of or belief in AGW, quite obviously with the objective of marking out “trouble makers” ready for ousting in the next round of convenient redundancies and to stall their careers. This is the definition of a witch hunt. It is the definition of un-American and all Americans should be enraged by that survey.
PS someone clever should go to this, ask some questions, and report on the answers. Try to film it.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Climate-mythbusting-Lane-Cove-Sydney-Feb-28.html
There are two key differences. The Climategate emails are legally ours to begin with because of the Freedom of Information laws. The second difference is this Heartland is funded by private interests and CRU is funded by taxpayers.
Paul Butler says:
February 15, 2012 at 11:10 am
1) FIghting the lies of the warmists, is not the only thing Heartland spends money on.
2) The groups listed are not the only ones trying to spread the AGW lies, as several others have mentioned, many govts are in on that game.
3) Who are these well heeled organizations who’s sole goal is fighting the AGW lies?
Anthony
This will probably run for a while, but don’t let it distract from your work here. Your explanation above is coherent, completely believable and prompt. As a general rule i am not that concerned about how you fund your blog. The good thing about this blog is that all comments and commentators are welcome, providing dacorum is preserved. Other blogs could learn from this attitude.
The project sounds like a good idea and relatively inexpensive, why aren’t NOAA doing and funding it thmselves????
Just a thought before I post this comment – How much would each regular WUWT reader have to put in to the TIP jar to fund the entire project? It would make an intersting story. Im good for $50, providing it could be directly attributed to this project. Im in the UK so that would beabout £35 at the current of exchange.
Best wishes
DavidS
Gary Hladik says (February 15, 2012 at 1:18 pm: “Is anyone else wondering if “FOIA” will take this opportunity to release the key to the remaining Climategate 2 E-mails?”
Bill Williams says (February 15, 2012 at 12:58 pm): “I wonder if all this jumping around by the alarmists will precipitate the release of the password for the remaining Climategate emails?”
Oops. OK, obviously others are wondering! 🙂
To all those complaining about Anthony receiving some thousands of dollars in a one time donation to provide information that overpaid government bureaucrats won’t provide, let’s compare grants to just one climate alarmist.
Recent Michael Mann grants:
Development of a Northern Hemisphere Gridded Precipitation Dataset Spanning the Past Half Millennium for Analyzing Interannual and Longer-Term Variability in the Monsoons: $250,000
Quantifying the influence of environmental temperature on transmission of vector-borne diseases: $1,884,991
Toward Improved Projections of the Climate Response to Anthropogenic Forcing: Combining Paleoclimate Proxy and Instrumental Observations with an Earth System Model: $541,184
A Framework for Probabilistic Projections of Energy-Relevant Streamflow Indices: $330,000
AMS Industry/Government Graduate Fellowship,: $23,000
Climate Change Collective Learning and Observatory Network in Ghana: $759,928
Analysis and testing of proxy-based climate reconstructions: $459,000
Constraining the Tropical Pacific’s Role in Low-Frequency Climate Change of the Last Millennium: $68,065
Acquisition of high-performance computing cluster for the Penn State Earth System Science Center (ESSC): $100,000
Decadal Variability in the Tropical Indo-Pacific: Integrating Paleo & Coupled Model Results: $102,000
Reconstruction and Analysis of Patterns of Climate Variability Over the Last One to Two Millennia: $315,000
Remote Observations of Ice Sheet Surface Temperature: Toward Multi-Proxy Reconstruction of Antarctic Climate Variability: $133,000
Paleoclimatic Reconstructions of the Arctic Oscillation: $14,400
Global Multidecadal-to-Century-Scale Oscillations During the Last 1000 years: $20,775
Resolving the Scale-wise Sensitivities in the Dynamical Coupling Between Climate and the Biosphere: $214,700
Advancing predictive models of marine sediment transport: $20,775
Multiproxy Climate Reconstruction: Extension in Space and Time, and Model/Data Intercomparison: $381,647
The changing seasons? Detecting and understanding climatic change: $266,235
Patterns of Organized Climatic Variability: Spatio-Temporal Analysis of Globally Distributed Climate Proxy Records and Long-term Model Integrations: $270,000
Investigation of Patterns of Organized Large-Scale Climatic Variability During the Last Millennium: $78,000
Total:
$6,232,700
[Mann collected $1.8 million to ‘study mosquito vectors’ – in addition to many $millions more in other payola. Why would someone pay Mann, instead of a biologist or an epidemiologist, to study disease transmission? It was payola, pure and simple. And I can’t seem to find Mann’s report. Maybe one of our resident trolls can find it.]
And that’s only Michael Mann’s payola, and an incomplete list at that. There are lots of alarmists on the climate grant gravy train, on both sides of the Atlantic. But the trolls monkey-pile on Anthony instead.
Hypocrites worry about the mote in someone else’s eye, while ignoring the 2×4 in their own eye. A textbook case of psychological projection by blatant hypocrites, starting with the very first post.
@Tucci78
“peeke, have you got anything factual with which to prove that what was reported in that Daily Mail article was in error, or are you just condemning this particular newspaper as “not a reliable scientific source“?
Because, bubbeleh, that’s the logical fallacy of argumentum ad hominem (evading address of the substance by attacking the source instead).”
The argumentum ad hominem fallacy is only a fallacy when used in an argument. I.e. something is not right or wrong because of who stated it. Checking the credentials of a certain person at the door however is more than useful. The thing is you can do this the way Lucia does: Constantly seeing how the current global temperature anomaly compares to models. And lo and behold, even with the spike the AGW croud mentioned as the HOTTEST YEAR EVAH, the doom scenario doesn’t hold. When you have that, why on earth would you check the Daily Mail?
Mind you, ΔT in and after the Dalton minimum, the sort of change is solar activity currently expected, was about 0.08K. And if you would dismiss the idea of a frozen Thames simply because of a Dalton-esque minimum, you will also be able to consider the current flattening of the line not caused by solar activity decrease. Hence it must be something else (Hint: The climate system currently has a negative feedback to forcings..)
Michael Tobiss says
(“I don’t think the other “green” groups are especially comparable as they have broader missions. Whether they ought to is another question. For instance, there’s not much percentage in protecting ecosystems under rapid climate change scenarios.”)
—————-
The heartland Inst has a broader focus then most of the green groups.
A few million to talk about the facts versus billions spent on propaganda.
I’ll take inexpensive facts over extremely expensive propaganda any day of the week.
KarlL says:
February 15, 2012 at 12:28 pm
———————-
You talk about oil funding yet you CONVENIENTLY ignore the points I made above. One example is CRU receiving funding from BP and Shell. Is that OK by you. I want an answer.
See also Pachauri’s links to BIG OIL. Is that OK by you. If yes then that’s what I call hypocrisy.
Maurizio Morabito (omnologos) said @ February 15, 2012 at 10:19 am
I can do better than that! In 1998 I was paid $AU65/hr for six hours of computer training by an oil company 🙂
Phil C says:
February 15, 2012 at 12:39 pm
kim2ooo —
This is all I’m asking:
1. Define “controversy” and “uncertainty” as it applies to K-12 natural sciences education
2. Define “Normal Science” as it applies to K-12 natural sciences education.
————————————————
Mr C.
When we are not allowed to discuss the controversy or uncertainties involving climate science in school…when a hypothesis without observational empirical evidence is taken as fact….you are not teaching normal science.
Koos says:
February 15, 2012 at 12:21 pm
Do you have any evidence to back up your claim that the contaminated sites were already removed from the data? Until Anthony’s work, the NOAA did not know that any of their sites were contaminated.
As to the rest of the world, why do you believe that it is in any better shape than the US?
Chris Colose: Arrogance does not make anyone correct, regardless of what the warmist establishment currently thinks.
Let’s not forget that Desmog is owned by Hoggan the Chairman of the David Suzuki Foundation whose funding has been increasingly under scrutiny since the sleuthing work by Vivian Krause.
http://fairquestions.typepad.com/rethink_campaigns/david-suzuki-foundation-70-million.html
Moreover, Suzuki himself is being called for being a political lobbyist masquerading under the guise of a charitable organization by the journalist Erza Levant of the Sun Network
http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/video/search/all/charity-or-lobby-group/1439306081001
So obviously Suzuki’s seat is getting hotter and since Hoggan is in the PR business… $44,000 should be enough smog over Suzuki’s tens of millions…
Computer says No.
Chris Colose said @ February 15, 2012 at 11:15 am
Presumably you have some evidence that Robert G Brown doesn’t have any expertise in physics:
http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/
Where is your evidence?
Apparently the smog blog doesn’t understand conservatives don’t do nothing until there’s a reason to do anything, that’s why conservatives rarely, if ever, lie. Although communists always lie so they think everybody else also lie, that’s why communist hippies always paint themselves into a corner, it’s infallible. :p
I am always amazed that the warmers keep looking at funding and ad hominems instead of data and relevant facts.
Guess that just shows that the average warmer is incapable of evaluating facts, and so must rely on the irrelevent for their conclusions.
BTW, DeSmog: can you show us any real evidence that man’s CO2 is causing dangerous warming?
Thanks
JK
You Guys are unreal says:
February 15, 2012 at 11:46 am
“As for the person who broke into Heartland’s system… I hope they go to jail for this cyber crime.”
Errm, you guys called the HACKER who stole from the CRU a ‘hero’. Whereas in this case it’s been reported as an inside whistleblower. That’s a whole different ball game.
==================
Dear Youguys, why is every CAGW proponent so blind and illogical in their comments? First of all one man said, “I hope they go to jail”; not “us guys”. Also ,the sceptics have for a long time maintained that FOIA likely was not a hacker, but an inside whislte blower. Finally, CRU is a public institution, whereas heartland is private. Please come back when you can make one cogent point.
timg56 says:
February 15, 2012 at 1:05 pm
Well Said!!!!!
Seriously, $44k for a programmer for a year?
As a “good” programmer and Web 2.0 developer, I can assure you that is more like 3 months worth. IF I’m on board with a project.
The group of unknown names posting on this thread are clearly unaware of, well, much.
I prefer to wait to see some proof that the key document was faked. If it’s true that, according to their press release, “It contains several obvious and gross misstatements of fact” then, unless the contradictory information is of a sensitive nature, I would expec that HI will provide it.
Until that happens, or HI reveals other information that someone else created the document, we only have evidence for the document being a fake, not proof.
Anthony,
I clicked through to see what the Guardian had to say and one of the things that struck me was this sentence….
“But Anthony Watts, a weathercaster who runs one of the most prominent _anti-science_ blogs”
Is this not almost libelous?
I’m pretty laid back but the constant lies and deceit from the warmists is really starting to piss me off.
Your anti-science ramblings are ridiculous, and you deserve this Heartland scandal. Nothing you say can ever stand up in court, as the science of climate change already has. You are a disgraceful little blogger and a merchant of doubt about a very serious issue. Good luck spinning this story, hack.
Love,
Every future human on this planet
Does anyone read DeSmogBlog?
Their Alexa rank: 144,552
WUWT: 15,974
They’re just jealous. Hey, don’t be mad, DeSmogBlog. It could be worse.
Realclimate: 223,449
Private individuals giving donations to private organizations to help other private individuals conduct private activities. Wow, that’s all they could come up with?
Keep up the good work, Anthony, you’re obviously getting “The Team” and friends worried…
The so-called ‘environmental’ organizations like Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Foundation are also tax-exempt, yet propagandize and proselytize at every turn, including testifying before Congressional committees. Should they also be “classified as lobbyists”?
In point of fact, there are specific rules in law that define ‘lobbyists’ at both federal and state levels.
What is ludicrous is how the warmist press and blogs are crowing over the discovery that Anthony received a small grant from a minor think tank like Heartland for a public-service website, while vast sums flow into all manner of government and academic entities for the avowed purpose of revealing the purported dangers of man-made ‘global warming’. It is no accident that in many fields of science, to get a grant from institutions like the NSF, you have to demonstrate its relevance to ‘climate change’ (viz. this post from yesterday: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/14/a-fish-story-from-antarctica/#more-56596 ).
I hope some other organizations and individuals with deep pockets will now seize the opportunity to publicly offer grants to independent scientists and researchers like E. M. Smith, Willis Eschenbach, Steve McIntyre, and of course Anthony Watts, to enable them to continue their work without having to rely on ‘day jobs’. Perhaps someone could establish an award like the MacArthur Foundation’s ‘genius’ awards for such brave pioneers in non-governmental, truly skeptical science.
/Mr Lynn
DeSmogblog are revealing some terrible truths. Heartland is trying to influence people by funding people that help make real-world data and climate-related science intelligible to the masses. So that ordinary folk can understand the real world. What is more, some folks love it so much that (allegedly) they are willing to shell out real money to spread the message. You have those who practice the dark arts of public relations and political spin really scared.
If you look at DeSmogBlog (or its links) you will not find out the following.
1. Heartland, on its website has 7 policy areas with 20 staff (out of 40 total). Environment issues occupy 3 of those.
2. In each of six areas, (Environment is one) it produces a monthly newsletter on topical issues. Sent free to 8400 elected officials, both Republican and Democrat. I am sure the CIA uses the same methods to remain secretive about its objectives.
3. By far the largest recipient of monthly grants for environment is Craig D Idso. DeSmog (nor the Sourcewatch link) provides links to the nasty co2science.org that this money helps fund. This provides a database, with summaries, of peer reviewed literature on (a) proxy studies for/against the MWP (b) ocean acidification studies (c) CO2 effects on plant growth (b) instant graphs of temperature anomalies.
If Heartland continues spending $1m+ a year on letting people know directly about climate change, it is going to throw out of work tens of thousands of people (many with doctorates) who spend long hours and billions a year of taxpayers money trying to put an alternative spin on the data. People should realise that Heartland and their cohorts are wrecking a whole industry and must be stopped.
On the other hand, a re-working of the assumptions behind economic models produced by Greenpeace and the UNIPCC, could show that wrecking this industry could make the average person on this plant 44% better off by 2050 than with the wrong set of policies, and have hundreds of millions of more lovely people around as well.
http://manicbeancounter.com/2011/07/20/ipcc-on-the-knife-edge-renewables-scenarios/
Keep up the good work. The truth will prevail. This will turn into another nail in the coffin for desmogblog.
William M. Connolley says:
February 15, 2012 at 11:14 am
“Lots of fun, eh? “effort will focus on providing curriculum that shows that the topic of climate change is controversial and uncertain – two key points that are effective at dissuading teachers from teaching science” is nice, though I note that the attempts to spin this are already starting.”
Wonderful. Wikipedia Winston Smith falls for the propaganda of his own site, then complains about spin.
Anthony – “The $90K figure is wrong, and not repeated in any other documents. my budget numbers were based on specific budget costs. Yet the fake doc rounds up to $90,000, a sign of trying to inflate the issue.”
My apologies, you are correct – while the “Strategy” document stated:
“We have also pledged to help raise around $90,000 in 2012 for Anthony Watts to help him create a new website to track temperature station data” (emphasis added)
the budget (a separate document) lists:
$88,000 Surface Stations Project
Payments to ItWorks/IntelliWeather to create web site featuring data from NOAA’s new
network of surface stations. First payment of $44,000 in January, second of same amount
contingent on fundraising around mid-year.
So going from that document, $44,000 budgeted, another $44,000 contingently targeted, $88,000 total – not $90,000. I was off by 2.2% from reading the strategy document. However, considering the small difference, and the fact that “around $90,000” (not $44,000/$44,000) is stated in the strategy document, I hope you understand why I made that error. And again – that’s certainly not out of line for a significant web project!
—
As above, I also find it curious that the ‘strategy’ document is scanned hardcopy. I would think that someone faking a document to go with a set of existing documents would use the same technique. And unless the budget has been significantly altered, all of the items in the strategy document are listed as expenses in the budget – including aspects that you, Carter, and Wojick have all confirmed.
The politicization of climate science isn’t a conservative, libertarian or liberal issue: We need to reach people of all points of view. Funding from an organization with a particular political viewpoint may make it harder to reach those who don’t hold that political point of view.
Next time, consider asking your readers first for funding and perhaps assistance with programming. If you think your reader’s generosity is smaller than the financial needs of your ambitions, perhaps ask Heartland fund any shortfall.
Matt says:
February 15, 2012 at 1:39 pm
“Your anti-science ramblings are ridiculous, and you deserve this Heartland scandal. Nothing you say can ever stand up in court, as the science of climate change already has.”
You mean like Stefan Rahmstorff, PIK scientist who slandered a German journalist and lost in court?
hey guys check the document properties.. the forged document is missing something.
Anthony, keep doing the good science I see hear every day, the funding is a red herring.
It seems you now have a new regular contributor by the name of Bill Connolley, you know you’re scaring the CAGW crowd when Bill comes here for some good science.
Keep Up The Good Work Anthony.
The Git notes that WUWT has devoted quite a large amount of space to debunking climate sceptic myths, not just CAGW myths. OTOH CAGW sites seem to delight in claiming that sceptics deny the fact that Earth has warmed since the LIA which is clearly a LIE. They also reveal themselves by denigrating the concept of Anthony transforming NOAA data into easily comprehended form. Some of us here will remember how Steve McIntyre was blocked from accessing data paid for from the public purse.
Clearly the CAGWers are afraid not just of the fantasy of CAGW, but allowing sceptics access to the data they purport supports their case. If CAGW was real, wouldn’t they want us to access the data?
Smokey says:
February 15, 2012 at 1:26 pm
Smokey – here’s some more data for you. If you want to see what our climate heros at NASA and NOAA have been raking in, go here:
http://php.app.com/fed_employees10/search.php
Publicly available federal government salary information at your fingertips. Just select Goddard Space Flight Center or NOAA and type in a name. In particular (since climate folks are interested in trends), look at the salary increases netted by our pals at GISS and NOAA from 2009 – 2010. This was a time when the non-government economy was in the tank – and friends of mine were being let go from their jobs.
I believe the alarmists ranting here (and Al Gore etc) should be awarded the age old American Indian title of “Walking Eagle”.
Sounds impressive and flattering until you know the real meaning:
So full of shit, he can’t fly.
Congrats Anthony, it sounds like a great project.
If the 2012 Climate Strategy Memo is a fake, then the clumsy curriculum strategy from whence it came would be fake. Since Heartland withheld other comments for further review, they are quite sure the memo is fake. Also, Heartland seems to have verification of the theft, how it occurred and what was stolen but is reviewing to see if any of the stolen stuff was altered / phonied up too.
It’s time someone here noted that Heartland hosted annual CAGW debates (at those modest but still high priced NY hotels) where the skeptical side routinely mopped the floor with the alarmists. I believe Gore, Hansen, et. al. were invited but did not accept. It’s also time someone acknowledged a high level of reliablity from Heartland projects. There’s a reason they’re being attacked with fraud and ad nauseum ad hominem. They’ve needed to discredit this source of information for a long, long time and there is no bad science with which to do it.
BTW, they aren’t subject to FOIA request are they? And yet the science is available. Making Mann and others look bad by doing what they wouldn’t. Isn’t Heartland just horrible?
The media coverage is a lesson in Lysenkoistic sycophancy. Don’t dare question prevailing authoritative narrative or you will be taken out.
The BBC’s Richard Black makes a false statement about WUWT:
BBC:
“Further funding will go to climate blogger and former meteorologist Anthony Watts for a web-based project aiming to demonstrate problems in the US network of temperature monitoring stations – an issue whose irrelevance to the big questions of climate change was emphatically demonstrated last year by the Berkeley Earth Project, which found station quality was not a factor in modern measurements of global warming.”
ie the money was nothing of the sort, it was clearly described as a project for making public weather data more easily and accessibly available to the public
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17048991
maybe it is time for the lawyers, Richards predjudices seem to be at work. this is misrepresentation and potentially reputationally damaging to WUWT
Matt says:
February 15, 2012 at 1:39 pm
Please explain where/what the scandal is. The only scandal that I have read about so far is someone stealing documents from Heartland. Other than that I don’t see any laws being broken.
Matt says:
February 15, 2012 at 1:39 pm
Your anti-science ramblings are ridiculous,…… blather, blather…..
==========================================
LOL…. you guys are a hoot…. you got any specifics?
Koos says
…..sevearal inane comments about fox news, past denail of fossile fuel funding…then-
“Also Heartland published his fallacious report claiming that the temperature records were changed by “dropping” stations in the past… I wonder how much money, or non-monetary compensation Watts got from Heartland for that piece of propaganda?
Well Koos, stations by the thousands were dropped, and past records were and are being changed
http://www.real-science.com/smoking-gun-giss
I did notice that the PDF was missing pretty much all metadata, and was created just this past Monday, rather than much earlier, which it would have been for a January meeting.
wow
a lot of words
why not just come clean Anthony and say: I take money from Heartland”
William M. Connolley says:
February 15, 2012 at 11:14 am
Lots of fun, eh?
Speaking of fun William, how are things going for you at Wikipedia these days ? Had hoped that maybe you had mellowed with age and gotten over your antagonistic streak.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/10/14/willia-connolley-now-climate-topic-banned-at-wikipedia/
JonasM says:
February 15, 2012 at 1:37 pm
I prefer to wait to see some proof that the key document was faked. If it’s true that, according to their press release, “It contains several obvious and gross misstatements of fact” then, unless the contradictory information is of a sensitive nature, I would expec that HI will provide it.
Until that happens, or HI reveals other information that someone else created the document, we only have evidence for the document being a fake, not proof.
—————————–
Actually, wrong.
Desmog presented them as real [ acting as the prosecutor ]…the onus is on them.
Logic exists for a reason.
This will probably backfire on them. Temperatures are just not going up!
CodeTech says:
February 15, 2012 at 1:37 pm
Seriously, $44k for a programmer for a year?
———————————————————
Shawn Halayka should have become a make-up artist, They make $44,600 a year.
http://www.payscale.com/fashion-week
Just a comment on updated stuff very hard to see unless you link to it
Clarification: The SCAN of the document was created on Monday.
If there is any fault here, and I am not sure there is, it is that Anthony should have flagged money he has received. It is hard to square the persistent flagging of warmists’ funding while keeping quiet about your own. It smacks of double standards.
REPLY: Well seeing how I haven’t even got a chance to put the website up yet (along with about page and funding notes) before I get jumped on, it’s a pretty impossible task to self flag ahead of something like this. – Anthony
MarkW said @ February 15, 2012 at 1:34 pm
The fact that WMO has a standard for temperature sites would seem to indicate that the potential for problems was know many long years ago. Roger Pielke Sr has at least one published paper on site contamination. Tom Karl published a paper on the issue long (10 yrs IIRC) before Anthony started WUWT. NOAA should have done what Surfacestations. org did at least a decade before. NOAA certainly knew there was an issue, but it didn’t matter. And that is quite telling in itself…
I love the way the warmies come rushing out from under their stones and congregate on WUWT every time they think a warmy point has been scored.
Unfortunately for them some of the documents are forged!
As this statement has come from Heartland:
“The individuals who have commented so far on these documents did not wait for Heartland to confirm or deny the authenticity of the documents. We believe their actions constitute civil and possibly criminal offenses for which we plan to pursue charges and collect payment for damages, including damages to our reputation.”
I hope there is enough room under the stones for you all to get away! It will be no fun with out you.
Shawn, I own a software development company. From my experience, $44,000 is a grossly underfunded web product development endeavor. Let’s have a look at a few of the “real” costs you seem to overlook:
A server capable of performing scheduled data acquisition, data aggregation, support data interfaces, running a database engine and web services will typically run in the range of $6K – $10K if it has any fault tolerance and drive redundancy (RAID) built in as would be necessary for this type of project.
The OS has a cost.
Data backup has a cost.
Off site data archiving has a cost.
Domain registration and annual renewal has a cost.
Server maintenance has a cost.
Hardware doesn’t run for free – there’s electrical costs for running the server plus environmental control for the room the server is running in.
You don’t run a data or web server without a UPS system. Our average cost for a reliable single server UPS is around $1,800 which provides a reasonable 8 hours of failover.
There’s monthly facility costs.
There’s fault monitoring costs (if the server will be monitored for failures).
There’s ongoing software maintenance costs.
Then there’s all the shipping, taxes, rack, cabling, postal, and other adjunct COS expenses. These tend to add up quickly.
For you to suggest that $44,000 is a lot shows that you have no concept of development workflow, production, and operational costs even for a very small endeavor. I would estimate the cost of taking a project like Anthony has proposed from concept to market at around $100,000 to $125,000 taking all of the above into consideration. That Anthony is getting it off the ground for as little as $44,000 is impressive.
BIG OIL FUNDING seems to have seeped everywhere. What is it with BIG OIL ‘deniers’ funding climate scientists. Disgraceful! It OK for BIG OIL to fund climate bandits but it certainly is not OK for them to fund sceptics. This is what is commonly known as double standards and it stinks.
The greater the noise the more convinced I become that Anthony Watts is right over the target.
Why would anyone want to associate with an organization that helped spread lies about the effects of smoking? Now they’re doing the same with AGW. They have an unethical track record.
Further, why the hell would I trust such an organization and anyone connected to it?
R. Gates says:
February 15, 2012 at 12:09 pm
Heartland said:
“But honest disagreement should never be used to justify the criminal acts…”
—–
So Heartand is also strongly condemning the actions of those who released the Climategate emails?
============================
Private organization, vs publicly funded CRU, get it?
Steven mosher said @ February 15, 2012 at 1:53 pm
Authenticity? 😉
Richard Black from the BBC has a piece up. I think he suffers from unclear reasoning:
“Further funding will go to climate blogger and former meteorologist Anthony Watts for a web-based project aiming to demonstrate problems in the US network of temperature monitoring stations – an issue whose irrelevance to the big questions of climate change was emphatically demonstrated last year by the Berkeley Earth Project, which found station quality was not a factor in modern measurements of global warming.”
Richard; calling Anthony Watts’ project irrelevant is detrimental to your efforts at scandalizing the Heartland funding. THINK for a moment. You’ve just said that Anthony got funding but it doesn’t matter anyway.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17040616
Hi William, glad you turned up on the thread because I had a question for you but didn’t know where to post my question (you being such a busy bee and all). With my day time job and family commitments
I find it hard to correct the “Carp fishing” Wikipedia (the free encyclopaedia that anyone can edit) entry even though it is plainly nonsense. Ideally I would like to find the time to “correct” all the Carp threads up to 5000+ times (or until I am stopped) in order to remove the bullshit that appears there. Trouble is, you see, I just can’t give up my day time job and so don’t have the time to serially correct all those idiots. Could you help me out? Where could I find sponsorship such that I could spend all my waking life correcting entries?
Matt – which court of law has the science Climate Change stood the rigors of? None to date.
As far as being a hack, it would appear you were looking in a mirror while writing rather than minding your manners…
Meanwhile in the UK, the Research Councils are dishing out £234 million p.a. for “climate change research and training”.
This, of course, is on top of direct UK govt funding and EU funding.
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2012/02/13/uk-universities-receive-72-million-p-a-for-climate-research/
I write articles primarily on aspects of climate history. Not only do I do it in my own time for free but I reckon to spend some 750 dollars a year on purchasing items necessary for authenticity of my articles such as buying research papers behind a pay wall.
It irritates me that on message climate researchers get funding of many tens of thousands of dollars and yet still can produce poor papers.
If sceptics could get even 10percent of the funding of the mainstream climate scientist I suspect they would ensure the collapse of cage scare mongering within two years.
Anthony spends a lot of his own time money and effort in supporting this blog and related activities so if he can find some outside funding for a specific project, good luck to him.it’s best that it is transparent however.
Tonyb
@KR –
Heartland claims the documents were E-mailed, not hand-delivered. The very fact that it was scanned (looking at it, the file is 20 times the size of the closest other one!) when the others were not makes it incredibly unlikely that a single person stole the whole thing.
My guess is that the “hacker” (not really hacking) knew enough to know that he might accidentally leave a digital fingerprint in a word document that would show it wasn’t made by Heartland, but not enough to know how to get rid of it, so he printed out his document and scanned it to hide this fact – (you wouldn’t EXPECT a scanned document to have its author listed as being from Heartland in the properties). He then likely didn’t do it for the other documents because of convenience and size restrictions.
Pretty lazy fake, actually.
The “Strategy” document is lacking the “Author” document properties (the others appear to list J. Bast as author) – but since it’s a scan of hardcopy, not a directly created PDF, that’s really not surprising. It could have been generated by a secretary.
Anthony,
It is my belief that the purpose of wattsupwiththat.com is to create and promote honesty in scientific debate. This is why it is read by so many people.
I would like to ask a couple of questions.
1. The Heartland Institute is a free market thinktank. Their goal is to promote the free market , or libertarianism, or something. Either way, it is a right-wing political organisation. Were not the alarm bells ringing when they offered you money?
2. At any time that the funding received by the warmists came up on wuwt.com since you took the money from Heartland, did it cross your mind at all that you should mention the Heartland money? Especially given the sometimes bloodthirsty comments posted at wuwt on this subject?
3. Did ir never occur to you to reject the Heartland funding and post this fact on wuwt as a banner headline?
Thanks in advance for answering,
Firstly this wasn’t a hack (or even a leak) it was a blag – pretending you are someone else to get access to confidential information. Google “Leveson Inquiry” for detail on how this practice was widespread in British newspapers.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/leveson-inquiry/8966022/Leveson-Inquiry-NOTW-used-blagging-to-get-football-managers-medical-records.html .
Secondly the “confidential memo” looks suspect, wrong font, different formatting, no author, no date, no circulation list. It also fails the “to be good to be true test”.
To anyone with a passing interst in the “dark arts” this all looks a bit amatuerish.
Wow, The warmthers are desperate to discredit you, Mr. Watts. You, of course, must defend yourself. I’d say you’ve done a good defense here today.
You should be gratified to see these salvos aimed at you and WUWT. The German scientists asking you to post their message and now this attack. One good thing , one bad. These things show the power that you are gaining.
Anthony Watts and The Many contributors on WUWT, you all ARE the front lines in the quest for truth against the great CAGW lie.
Visiting this site is a tonic for the lunacy that abounds elsewhere.
KR – why in the world would you expect this document to not be a word document. Describe a likely scenario where the “leaker” either obtained a 2.7 meg PDF from Heartland or managed to get this piece of paper out of the building to scan it himself. Sure, it is technically possible, but if you try to imagine it happening, it gets really silly really fast.
R Shearer says:
February 15, 2012 at 11:18 am
> Does Anthony have a helicopter?
> REPLY: No, nor even a plane like Mr. Gore does, – Anthony
I hear Burt Rutan has an airplane, maybe he’s evil.
Anthony admits to having an electric car, but it’s a small car.
I guess I’m not sure what your point is, then again, I’m not sure what my point is.
Keep up the good work AW.
Funding to fix the omissions and lack of clarity and readability of the NOAA site should be coming from government sources though. Maybe its time to approach the government or one of the climate companies for extra funding , they have plenty !!!!
And doesn’t everyone want REAL DATA, not maniplated propaganda? 😉
derryman. the fake document also appears to have the budget figures wrong.
Mr Lynn says:
The so-called ‘environmental’ organizations like Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Foundation are also tax-exempt, yet propagandize and proselytize at every turn, including testifying before Congressional committees. Should they also be “classified as lobbyists”?
The IRS already examined that and is fine with Greenpeace’s status.
What is ludicrous is how the warmist press and blogs are crowing over the discovery that Anthony received a small grant from a minor think tank like Heartland for a public-service website, while vast sums flow into all manner of government and academic entities for the avowed purpose of revealing the purported dangers of man-made ‘global warming’. It is no accident that in many fields of science, to get a grant from institutions like the NSF, you have to demonstrate its relevance to ‘climate change’
Funny how Anthony never mentioned the grant for his website before this leak. Government grants are public knowledge (at least the abstract and the amount awarded). I do agree with you, however, on your last point: let there be more transparency! Heartland and the other think tanks should proudly tell the world which grants they are funding and why. Instead, their press release apologizes to their “allies in the fight…who have had…their integrity impugned.” Huh?
DirkH says:
February 15, 2012 at 1:52 pm
Matt says:
February 15, 2012 at 1:39 pm
“Your anti-science ramblings are ridiculous, and you deserve this Heartland scandal. Nothing you say can ever stand up in court, as the science of climate change already has.”
You mean like Stefan Rahmstorff, PIK scientist who slandered a German journalist and lost in court?
===================
Or an inconvient truth, found to be full of false claims in the UK.
In what court did the science of CAGW hold up?
Varek Raith said @ February 15, 2012 at 2:07 pm
Good point. IPCC lied about only referencing peer reviewed scientific papers. They lied about the Himalayan glaciers melting away by 2035. You might want to read about even more of their lies in Donna Laframboise’s book: http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/my-book/
I read the guardian article. It sounds desperate. There’s nothing there but a sense of urgency. No facts. Nothing to indicate wrongdoing. And WUWT’s explanation is there making the whole thing seem ridiculous. $88K for programmers and web design that will benefit everyone? OH NOES!!! You’ve been expose Watts!!! hahahaa Warmists are grasping at straws. This is proof that the thinner the straws get, the tighter they hold on.
Git,
the fake document has been sanitized. missing document properties. The orginator would not
sanitize the document.
JonasM says:
February 15, 2012 at 2:03 pm
I did notice that the PDF was missing pretty much all metadata, and was created just this past Monday, rather than much earlier, which it would have been for a January meeting.
#####
yup, there is no reason to scan it EXCEPT to hide that it is a fake.
Mosh, check your email
Heartland: “They stole our documents and posted them!”
Reporter: “SOO, they were true then?”
Heartland: “No they were totally fraudulent, made up documents!”
Reporter: “Then, they were not stolen, if they were made up?”
Heartland: “They were stolen, completely made up documents”
Reporter: “Who, then, stole them?”
Heartland: “Thieves”
Reporter: “SOO, again, they stole real documents?”
Heartland: “No, they completely made them up”
Reporter: “Nevermind”
“REPLY: No, you may not and they don’t. That’s not careful wording, simply a statement of fact. Of course people such as yourself will try to find all sorts of nefarious motives. Also, and most imporatant, the figure pledged thus far is $44K, not $88K, nor the roundup to $90K listed in news stories. – Anthony”
The 90K figure comes from the questionable document. That document also claims 88K for employee expenses.
Doesnt add up
You will find my name on the 2012 proposed budget (wow, $125/month!!!) but that was something they requested me to do but I declined.
Anthony, keep the receipts and accounts for the job at hand and publish them on Watts Up With That at the end of the year when the job is complete. This will account for all the cash and show that you personally didn’t profit in any way – all cash was spent on research. Return any unspent money to the Heartland Institute. This will show that you did it purely in the name of science for all, both pro & anti AGW, and in no way was it for personal profit.
Consider just two comments in the long list above (now at 254):
Exp @ 11:51, writes of the “dying fossil fuel industry.”
oakgeo @ 12:19 writes “. . . Check your facts;”
Well, the Canadians have oil they will be selling to the world market.
North Dakota has oil they are selling in the USA.
Pennsylvania and adjacent states have so much natural gas the market can’t handle it all – storage and buyers are needed.
Australia has coal. Brazil and Mexico keep finding oil.
Green energy projects are collapsing in piles of ruble and bankruptcies.
Exp,
If you need links to any of the above – you are way behind the curve! And the same to your friends.
————————————————————
I visited this site the other day:
http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2012/02/will-we-do-anything-about-global.html
From a degreed “climate scientist” the first image is of four lovely blankets stacked one upon another and the implication that “greenhouse gases” act like blankets. Later, he suggest we need more dams in the Columbia River system for irrigation – because of declining snowpack. Then he expresses the idea that a good level of world population is a “steady 2 billion” people.
If this is climate science, then perhaps, it ought not to be taught at all.
————————————————————
As for today’s little kerfuffle, it too shall pass.
now if I can find your `funding` box thats hidden hereabouts there`s 44$ to your account, if 1000 of us donate that there`s the rest of the money,
and thank heavens that we are an active `opposition` party, just translate that into politics and think what it would be like if the opposition parties stopped being an opposition to the group in power.
It is critical for science (and everything else) to have an opposition, it keeps things just nice and level and stops power corrupting .
It’s worth responding to DeSmogBlog’s claims of “several items in the fake document is correct”.
I believe that every “fact” they reference is also referenced in the other documents. I’m going to go verify that now…
Anthony
I am SO pissed at the way you have been treated in this mess that I am giving myself a preemptive, self-imposed ‘time out’. Nothing I want to say right now is publishable.
Best of luck, you will come out on top in the end.
W^3
Varek Raith says:
February 15, 2012 at 2:07 pm
Why would anyone want to associate with an organization that helped spread lies about the effects of smoking? Now they’re doing the same with AGW. They have an unethical track record.
Further, why the hell would I trust such an organization and anyone connected to it?
No, Varek trust people who obviously fudge data “for a good cause”. Now everything is clear, the 15 years lack of warming, the ARGO data not showing ocean warming, the uncooperative satellite not showing sea level rise, this is all unimportant trash, we only dreamed that because Anthony was given 44kUSD for the his project. The fact that xx % stations measuring temp were badly fitted is not true. Actually they were ok, it was only the money which made us believe…
Hm, do you really think so Varek?
Somebody seems to think I object to Anthony creating online tools to make publicly funded data available, or to obtaining funding for this activity from whatever source.
I don’t.
Don’t misunderstand. I am confident that most of you, including our host, badly misunderstand the science of climate.
However, I think complaining about the terrible state of public access to publicly funded scientific work is entirely legitimate. I agree with most of you completely on that score and I support any volunteer initiatives to improve the situation.
Hundreds of notes in support and just a handful of naysayers. You have to be proud of your efforts.
Can’t speak for the US but as far as the UK is concerned you are talking nonsense. Here we have a situation where children are programmed with, in much of the curriculum, absolute crap. Surely in a democracy, not the UK of course, I, or my organisation, have every right to fund and put forward a different opinion.
Clearly, by any measure, the catastrophists have had way too much time in office. They were wrong then and are wrong now so why would I allow them to continue indoctrinating my K12 with their crap? Fighting funds are needed and the only problem I see is that the taxpayer is being currently forced to fund a side.
TheFlyingOrc – The strategy document (wherever it came from) states that it is to be kept confidential, only distributed to a subset of Institute Board and senior staff. Joseph Bast (president) was apparently out of town when this got leaked, and who knows – he might not have been available to pull a limited distribution document off his computer.
But again – any secretary can scan an existing document and put it into a PDF – that gets done all the time. The fact that this is a scan doesn’t have much bearing on it’s authenticity.
Again, though – all of the financials discussed in the strategy document are line items in the budget and other documents!
steven mosher said @ February 15, 2012 at 2:28 pm
Hence my comment. What’s your problem?
Shawn Halayka says:
February 15, 2012 at 10:51 am
I suspect there’s going to be a lot of data wrangling involved, not as bad as what’s in the Harry ReadMe file, of course, but I think there will be a lot of debate over what sites have decent data for records. (Have you ever taken a look at the sites http://mapcenter.hamweather.com/records/yesterday/us.html refers to?) And of course, commercial grade hardware, whatever work it takes to deal with the ISP over denial of service attacks and nonsense that happens these days, and gee, it would be sort of nice if you set up a FTP account for me so my software could upload the ENSO meter. So far Comcast hasn’t squawked about the 100,000 references per day it’s serving because WordPress makes it hard to keep it there. Heck, I’ll give you the Python code for it, it’ll just take you a few minutes to add it to crontab.
The point is – it’s not just coding. What’s left of the $44K isn’t going to cover much “professional” programming.
Perhaps you’re lucky and can spend full time programming, but all the projects I’ve been involved in require a huge amount of communication and coordination time. $44K? I don’t think that pre-tax income would pay for a year of my daughter’s college expenses. Two more monthly payments. I think I’ll make it….
John Billings says:
February 15, 2012 at 2:05 pm
If there is any fault here, and I am not sure there is, it is that Anthony should have flagged money he has received. It is hard to square the persistent flagging of warmists’ funding while keeping quiet about your own. It smacks of double standards.
-================
Except, Anthony’s project is privately funded, whereas his flagging usually relates to publicly funded misadventures.
To take Anthony to task, for using private money to further his/our understanding (of anything) is patently ridiculous.
I wonder one thing… with exception of the donor names, was there any real secret in the published documents (authentic ones, not fakes), i.e. something the Heartland Institute would refuse to publish even when asked?
So sorry that you have to put up with this nonsense. Rest assured that those of us who are interested in getting to the bottom of climate and how it works, are fully behind you. Stick in there and don’t feed the beast too much, they are not interested in the truth only selling column inches. In other words give them the absolute minimum facts and starve them of a story.
Nevermind, it’s unnecessary. Every single point they raise as to the document’s “authenticity” they verify by pointing out that it is confirmed in the budget document. Meaning, of course, that the person who made it had access to that information.
They present this as an argument as to its authenticity.
This is why it is important to never decide that a person or group is always “the bad guy”. You end up looking really foolish as you assume any level of deviant scheming, no matter how ridiculous it seems if you don’t consider them to be basically Snidely Whiplash.
Hi Anthony – I’ve archived the BBC webpage – just in case..
clearly mis-representing you – #intentionally’ ?
I really don’t bother who funds whom.
If science work is done correctly it is for the benefit of the science and humanity as a whole, regardless who does or doesn’t like the result.
If results are corrupted to the request of the funding source, truth would eventually be found out to the discredit and the shame of the parties concerned.
u.k.(us) says:
February 15, 2012 at 2:42 pm J
John Billings says:
February 15, 2012 at 2:05 pm
If there is any fault here, and I am not sure there is, it is that Anthony should have flagged money he has received. It is hard to square the persistent flagging of warmists’ funding while keeping quiet about your own. It smacks of double standards.
-================
Except, Anthony’s project is privately funded, whereas his flagging usually relates to publicly funded misadventures.
To take Anthony to task, for using private money to further his/our understanding (of anything) is patently ridiculous.
No, sorry, that’s incorrect, “To take Anthony to task, for using private money to further his/our understanding (of anything) is patently ridiculous” is wholly erroneous.
Taking money from right-wing thintanks on the quiet is a dirty business. Please don’t be so naive as to pretend that this is not so.
We need to.demonstrate that we are above the follies and financial misbehaviour of the other side. If Anthony had needed money, he could have outright asked for it (and he would have got it) instead of taking money on the quiet.
Congratulations, Anthony! You know you’ve made the big time when the big guns get leveled in your direction rather than gracing you with a dismissive wave of the hand as if to ward off a pesky gnat. I believe you now have their undivided attention! Best stick your fingers in your ears.
Any chance of a reference for your statement of ‘fact’? Your claim maybe tested soon. Hailing Michael Mann. ;>)
What chances do you think I have with the same comment you made above at say RC? Abuse does not make you right. The truth is simply the truth and will always win in the end.
Now, back to court.
And here I was thinking that Dr. James Hansen gave advice to Gore on the fakeumentary.
Michael Tobis said @ February 15, 2012 at 2:37 pm
Let me remind you of what you wrote @ February 15, 2012 at 11:37 am
Given the document you quote is a really obvious forgery, you must be a very gullible person Michael. And if you are so easily gulled by such, then I feel I can reasonably assume you have been gulled on other occasions about such things as… climate change.
It seems to me that a primary duty of scientist and skeptic alike — a duty that we owe most especially to our children and grandchildren, who will inherit the planet that we are creating — is to provide the strongest skeptical analysis in regard to the strongest scientific theories and observations.
That is why focusing weak skeptical “gotchas” on weak “not even wrong” science amounts to a dereliction of duty to future generations. And basing weak “gotchas” on illegally obtained, out-of-context, dubious-provenance documents is just plain disgraceful.
No matter who does it, stolen-document “gotchas” are just plain wrong. Everyone should appreciate the harm that comes from this practice, condemn it absolutely, and foreswear it utterly, both scientist and skeptic alike.
Guardian has an update, and it goes way out of its way to act like things are still exactly as bad.
Whoops, forgot to include the link:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/15/heartland-institute-fraud-leak-climate
DirkH says:
February 15, 2012 at 1:39 pm
Does anyone read DeSmogBlog?
Their Alexa rank: 144,552
WUWT: 15,974
They’re just jealous. Hey, don’t be mad, DeSmogBlog. It could be worse.
Realclimate: 223,449
Heh, Watch out RealClimate, the Talkshop’s coming to getcha.
Talkshop Rank: 248,668
So the “key” document is a confirmed fake. One is reminded of the description of the Hitler Diaries – a poor fake but a good hoax .
Claude Harvey said @ February 15, 2012 at 2:53 pm
A bit hard to do that while holding one’s nose to avoid the stench 😉
Hmmm.
My first post here has been censored, cleaned out, evaporated. That’s not good for free debate.
It was:
John Billings says:
February 15, 2012 at 2:05 pm
If there is any fault here, and I am not sure there is, it is that Anthony should have flagged money he has received. It is hard to square the persistent flagging of warmists’ funding while keeping quiet about your own. It smacks of double standards.
————
Luckily, it was replied to, quoting it in full, before the censors took it out. Thanks to u.k.(us) says:
February 15, 2012 at 2:42 pm
Also interesting is how words change. I just read a warmist post above referring to the “Fossil Industry”.
Like Carbon Dioxide, to these warmists, become just “Carbon”. (Carbon Footprint, Carbon Trading etc.) Fossil Fuels becomes just “Fossil”.
What about the paleontologists? The “Fossil Industry” has none. Go figure.
SHOCKING !!! Heartland has meeting on FUND RAISING. Oh, the scandal of it all !!!
Is this it? And they are helping Watts fund a study of temperature records? Isn’t that called science? These people are absolutely amazing.
By the way, this is as good as an excuse as any for the whistleblower to release the PGP key for the Climategate III file. DO IT.
John Billings says:
February 15, 2012 at 2:49 pm
Taking money from right-wing thintanks on the quiet is a dirty business. Please don’t be so naive as to pretend that this is not so.
I suppose taking money on the quiet from left-wing sources is perfectly ok? If its not please ask sks and realclimate about their funding.
Russ in Houston says:
February 15, 2012 at 3:05 pm
No, Russ, I don’t think that “taking money on the quiet from left-wing sources is perfectly ok”.
[snip]
John Billings says:
February 15, 2012 at 2:49 pm
We need to.demonstrate that we are above the follies and financial misbehaviour of the other side.
Oh, yeah…only the crooks should get paid. That way they will be the only ones left who can stay in existence. Nice try. That’s called “argumentum ad incorruptum” or arguing the perfect to deny the good.
” Phil C says:
February 15, 2012 at 11:06 am
You seem particularly concerned about your role in this, Anthony. Actually, your $88,000 is small potatoes compared to much larger concerns these documents raise. The first I can think of is the classroom project. This is scary. The Heartland memo writes that the effort is to promote curricula, and I quote here “that are effective at dissuading teachers from teaching science.” I think science teachers should be teaching science. Do You?”
Phil C. Honestly. Do you really think that the directors of Heartland have a policy to keep teachers from teaching science? This is a freudian slip of the creator of this falsified document. They sit around j*rking-off with their fantasies that people who question global warming are neanderthals. If this idiot had any sense, he would have wrote “that are effective in dissuading teachers from teaching GLOBAL WARMING”. But his bigotted fantasies got in the way and he destroyed any chance for this document to be taken seriously. It is obviously fraudulant. Which then raises the question of why the Global Warming Hoaxsters have to resort to fraudulant documents in order to discredit the opposing scientists.
> how are things going for you at Wikipedia these days
Very well thanks: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/William_M._Connolley if you’re wondering; you’re behind the times I’m afraid.
I see that Heartland are now claiming the “key” document is fake. That makes things more exciting. It will be fun to see if they can hold that line.
“The documents celebrate funding from the Koch Brothers”
“Further funding will go to climate blogger and former meteorologist Anthony Watts for a web-based project aiming to demonstrate problems in the US network of temperature monitoring stations – an issue whose irrelevance to the big questions of climate change was emphatically demonstrated last year by the Berkeley Earth Project, which found station quality was not a factor in modern measurements of global warming.”
The Irony is that the Koch brothers funded the Berkley Earth Project.
Richard Black = Worst journalist ever
Also why did the BBC capitalize ‘brothers’?
bubbagyro says:
February 15, 2012 at 3:15 pm
Cobblers. The argument is that if you criticise the payments others receive, then you should not take payments yourself. Or, if you do, you should admit to them upfront, and avoid the embarrassment witnessed here today.
Nothing to do with “crooks” or anything else.
“Phil C says:
February 15, 2012 at 11:06 am
You seem particularly concerned about your role in this, Anthony. Actually, your $88,000 is small potatoes compared to much larger concerns these documents raise. The first I can think of is the classroom project. This is scary. The Heartland memo writes that the effort is to promote curricula, and I quote here “that are effective at dissuading teachers from teaching science.” I think science teachers should be teaching science. Do You?”
Excuse me if this is a repeat post. Phil, do you really think the directors of Heartland actually put together a plan to keep teachers from teaching science? The Global Warming Hoaxsters consider those who investigate and question Global Warming to be neanderthals. Their bigotry has burnt them. If the idiot had written “that are effective in dissuading teachers from teaching GLOBAL WARMING”, the document might be believeable (but then it wouldn’t be scandalous). They blew it and this document is a joke.
Which raises the question, why do the global warming hoaxsters have to resort to fake documents to smear the opposing scientists? It’s because they’ve go nothing.
I would like to present the following thoughts on the issue presented above:
In the understanding that many might believe its naivety, the funding issue is a non-story. Personally, I could care less and don’t quite understand why everyone else seems to care so much about who and where funding for projects comes from. Following is my reasoning.
Funding is not the issue, the science is the issue. Funding is only wrong in the event that the funds are tied to obtaining pre-conceived results, and if this occurs it should be easily refuted by looking at the science. In the end, who really cares where the money comes from, whether it be the Heartland Institue, Koch Brothers, BP, Shell, Greenpeace, Sierra Club, etc., and who it goes to (Anthony Watts, Steve McIntyre, Michael Mann, Phil Jones, CRU, etc.). What matters is whether the results of the science or project is SOUND, DEFENSIBLE, and REPEATABLE.
So in my humble opinion, and this goes for both AGW proponents and AGW opponents, instead of attacking the money, we should be focusing on the science (i.e., methodology, analysis and results, and conclusions). After all, why waste time and effort on a money trail, when the meat and bones of the argument is in the science?
Thank you for taking the time to read my two cents worth.
John Billings said @ February 15, 2012 at 3:02 pm
If I can read it, it’s not censored. You do know what censored means I take it. Anthony’s comment is still accompanying it where I read it some time ago. Why are you making things up? Oh, that’s right, you’d be a CAGWer [self-snip]
I’ll comment in general that source of funding is a neo-Marxist scam, for two reasons:
– their fixed-pie capitalist-exploitation view of life motivates them to think that businesses have special advantage and are automatically wrong.
– they peddle the notion that it is wrong for their oponents to speak out, while they can spout irrational anti-human nonsense. They take funding from afar (as exposed by Vivian Krause from the Vancouver BC area, and others), and have many organizations with names that infer they are mainstream but are quite biased, yet claim opposing thinktanks are bad.
Yes, I evaluate environmentalist activists and their financial supporters as neo-Marxist, because of the combination of their anti-business rants and their negative views of humans.
And people do ally with the Heartland Institute on occasion. A couple of years ago Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand institute gave a good talk at their climate conference and was heavily involved with it. ARI and many Heartland members probably disagree on some things, though ARI is careful about who it associates with.
http://heartland.org/about
http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=media_topic_science
John Billings,
This project has not even been announced yet. Generally acknowledgement of funding comes out in the final report. You’re putting the cart before the horse. And who cares where Anthony gets funded from. Has anyone found problems with his past excellent work?
odd enough that I can remember times when Anthony has not hesitated to admit he was wrong about something….and plenty of times he’s made corrections to some post…and placed those corrections and updates in the blog header where they can’t be missed…
….that’s an honest broker
It doesn’t matter who finances the science…the science is on the internet….and will face the ultimate peer review
bubbagyro said @ February 15, 2012 at 3:15 pm
There ya go. I thought it was called bullshitting, but then I’m a farmer 😉
John Billings says:
February 15, 2012 at 2:49 pm
“Taking money from right-wing thintanks on the quiet is a dirty business. Please don’t be so naive as to pretend that this is not so.
We need to.demonstrate that we are above the follies and financial misbehaviour of the other side. If Anthony had needed money, he could have outright asked for it (and he would have got it) instead of taking money on the quiet.”
==================
Anthony, (if I may say so) is only following up on an idea.
I’m sure the data collected (from the dirty thinktank’s funds), will be published, and will be examined by anyone willing to download the data (it’s the new peer-review).
Anthony will take his lumps, make corrections, then add to our scientific knowledge.
What’s wrong with that ?
I was wondering if it was worth my time to see what sks is saying. Numbnuts over there is always a hoot.
(You know him as dana1981.)
Dear Moderator,
Other than political preference, is there any reason why John Billings says:February 15, 2012 at 3:12 pm has been snipped?
Given that it was in no way argumentative, nor challenging, nor abusive, nor anything, I would like you to publish the text and you reasoning.
It was:
No, Russ, I don’t think that “taking money on the quiet from left-wing sources is perfectly ok”.
[snip] > Nor do I think that taking money from right wing sources is OK
Stop censoring posts.
REPLY: Mr. Billings, I’ll leave the other moderator to comment, but really, you are out of line and I reject the notion that it was “on the quiet”. By this action I was denied the opportunity to let this project proceed normally, and to post the particulars of fundings in the finished website. If you are concerned about “on the quiet” then please go to other websites and demand that scientists seeking grants announce their intentions AHEAD OF TIME instead of in the final finished paper as they normally do.
Until you do that, demanding other scientists disclose funding of projects on blogs BEFORE they are completed and still in conceptual stage, please just hold your boorish and pointless commentary and insinuations. Be as upset as you wish. – Anthony Watts
So… can we be clear here.. $300,000 “for making that happen” [presenting an alternate view] as compared to what? Putting an undisclosed number of “UN delegates” (and their NGO “hangers on”), (20,000+ all on full expenses?), onto an nice tropical island (Bali) for a couple of weeks to discuss “climate change, women and poverty in the third world”. Well to quote that greatest of all British citizens … Aiii… for real… Richard.
Hundreds of Billions bilked from taxpayers over twenty years as compared to $300,000. And you hate the fact that $300,000 wins because you are no nearer Thermageddon than you were back then. Ho Hum, guess money can’t buy everything eh?
Personally I would have gotten out at the moment you needed to re-brand the product – but hey, what do I know?
Anthony, I suspect in the long run this will be a good thing.
I know it probably does not feel like it now as you try to keep tabs on what is being said where and make sense of all the FUD being thrown around.
Their thrashing around with out checking facts is only likely to result in them stepping on some land mines of their own manufacture.
My instinct is that the CAGW crowd will find that they are opening a debate that they do not want opened. Many of their “assertions” if turned and examined against the major players in the global warming propaganda effort will show the huge contrast between their funding levels and the small sums used to find out their manipulation and abuse of the data.
The funding they are whining about is a pittance compared to the boat loads of cash thrown around to steer the media and the educational centers to present their twisted view of science.
The secondary incomes earned by Hansen et al in addition to their professional (word used reluctantly) income “should” be a scandal already but since the media is sittting in the corner playing 3 deaf dumb and blind monkeys it is largely unknown by the general public.
This uproar may change that.
Larry
Wow, a whole new crew of trolls, wish they could express themselves with clearly written vitriol.
All of us “normal” readers appreciate your hard work. Keep smiling.
Time to hit the Tip jar.
William M. Connolley says:
February 15, 2012 at 3:18 pm
=========
Just as an FYI to any members of the Heartland Institute who try to whitewash this article. Don’t even bother. It will be reverted.
===========
William M Connally wrote: “I see that Heartland are now claiming the “key” document is fake. That makes things more exciting. It will be fun to see if they can hold that line.”
Well, considering that this fake document supposedly records Heartland directors trying to dissuade teachers from “teaching science”, I don’t think Heartland needs much effort to “hold the line” with people with common sense. But PT Barnuam said a fool is born every minute, or something like that.
And yes, this is the “key” document, as the other documents show that Heartland engaged in, please don’t faint, FUNDRAISING. And of course there is the donor list. THAT is indeed troubling as the Global Warming fascis.., I mean hoaxsters have a history of ruining people who don’t follow the party line.
The Pompous Git says:
February 15, 2012 at 3:22 pm
My comment has now reappeared, with Anthony’s answer. I’m making nothing up. I may have jumped the gun, for technical reasons, for which I apologise. Nor am I an AGWer.
So now could you or the moderator explain the snip on John Billings says: February 15, 2012 at 3:12 pm ??
Any justifiable reason for that?
REPLY: I don’t know, I haven’t seen the comment, but you’ve had plenty since and I’m growing damned tired of your insinuations. Take a time out. – Anthony
Tip of the warmist Iceberg hehe.
http://opinion.financialpost.com/2012/01/17/vivian-krause-oil-sands-money-trail/
“I hope you will explore NOAA and how our products and services can enrich your own life.”
Dr. Jane Lubchenco
Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere
and NOAA Administrator
I just thought I would let Dr. Lubchenco know that I look forward to Anthony Watts displaying the NOAA data without any adjustments to allow easy side-by-side comparisons of stations, plus other graphical representations output 24/7/365. Once that feature is made available on WUWT, I know that your products and services will enrich my own life. I donated what I could to Anthony Watts, who is a “dedicated scientist us[ing] cutting-edge research and high-tech instrumentation to provide citizens, planners, emergency managers and other decision makers with reliable information they need when they need it.” I look forward to exploring those high and low record temps.
This is too funny!!!! So, the morons like DeSmog and the rest of the cast of idiots ran with the “Confidential Memo: 2012 Heartland Climate Strategy,” email. It was entirely erroneous.
So, the question is, who knew it was erroneous. But, even the ones who didn’t know and ran it anyway have simply shown that they are incapable of the necessary critical thinking skills to discern fact from fiction and can’t be trusted to adequately filter the information available.
Truly the question is, are they really evil and intentionally misleading the public? Or, are they easily duped and are too stupid to know when they’re being used? It really can’t be anything but this. So, you alarmists here……. can you tell me which is it? AHAHAHAHAHAHAAHHAAHA!!!! rotflmaopmp!!!!!
Hey, why don’t I get a mention by Defameblog? I must have donated a couple of hundred dollars or so to Anthony.
Time to sin again … over to the tip jar folks!
Joyously, another poster has come to my aid in this censorship battle.
Again, my friend u.k.(us) has inadvertently preserved my censored post. So now you can all see what was censored:
u.k.(us) says:
February 15, 2012 at 3:29 pm
John Billings says:
February 15, 2012 at 2:49 pm
“Taking money from right-wing thintanks on the quiet is a dirty business. Please don’t be so naive as to pretend that this is not so.
We need to.demonstrate that we are above the follies and financial misbehaviour of the other side. If Anthony had needed money, he could have outright asked for it (and he would have got it) instead of taking money on the quiet.”
==================
Anthony, (if I may say so) is only following up on an idea.
I’m sure the data collected (from the dirty thinktank’s funds), will be published, and will be examined by anyone willing to download the data (it’s the new peer-review).
Anthony will take his lumps, make corrections, then add to our scientific knowledge.
What’s wrong with that ?
—
You censors are not very good: you need to take out the replies too.
WOW, they’re out in strength!
Their logic still seems impaired though, eg…
coeruleus says:
February 15, 2012 at 2:26 pm
Do people usually disclose funding before a project is actually finished, let alone started?
DaveE.
jono1066 @ February 15, 2012 at 2:36 pm, said
now if I can find your `funding` box thats hidden hereabouts there`s 44$ to your account, if 1000 of us donate that there`s the rest of the money,
You only need 998. Donation button is just above the link to the other blogs. It is very understated.
Justa Passerby wrote: “Though experiment: Let’s say I’m a leading commentator on, say, which brand of automobile is best for the consumer. It is revealed that GM “helped me find a a donor for funding” some project… to the tune of almost $100,000. Does this strengthen the credibility of my new report, which states enthusiastically that GM has absolutely the only worthwhile car on the market?”
Except that Watts is using the funding to build a web service to allow citizens to access GOVERNMENT information. It has nothing to do with advocasy. How does building a service to allow you to access sound temperature data PROVIDED BY THE GOVERNMENT have anything to do with your analogy?
William M. Connolley says:
February 15, 2012 at 3:18 pm
“> how are things going for you at Wikipedia these days
Very well thanks: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/William_M._Connolley if you’re wondering; you’re behind the times I’m afraid.
I see that Heartland are now claiming the “key” document is fake. That makes things more exciting. It will be fun to see if they can hold that line.”
The real fun will only start when even wikipedia will have to recognize reality. Please make sure there’s NPOV reporting about the ensuing purges.
Seriously, Connolly. If you find it “exciting” to update an article taking a group you don’t like down a peg, you shouldn’t be editing that article. How could you possibly have NPOV? Consider that Wikipedia as a project is more important than you getting a rush.
Let’s review Watt’s proposed project, which as far as I know has not even been announce yet:
From Anthony: “It is simply for this special project requiring specialized servers, ingest systems, and plotting systems. They also don’t tell me what the project should look like, I came up with the idea and the design. ***The NOAA data will be displayed without any adjustments to allow easy side-by-side comparisons of stations ***, plus other graphical representations output 24/7/365. Doing this requires programming, system design, and bandwidth, which isn’t free and I could not do on my own.
And that is it. A web service to allow people to compare station data. That would be NOAA data, as in government data. That’s it. And this is all the hoaxsters have to “smear” him with. Actually Mr. Watts, you should probably be laughing your @SS off write now. This really is comical. Well, the fake document supposedly recording Heartland plotting to keep teachers from teaching science might even be funnier.
This little episode simply confirms that to some people funding and its source are far more important than the science.
Latitude said @ February 15, 2012 at 3:24 pm
….
It doesn’t matter who finances the science…the science is on the internet….and will face the ultimate peer review
I have suggested such an approach myself, on here and to Lief Salvgaard, our Sun specialist. For critical science, donations over the webinet should be able to raise large sums of money to sponsor actual science. If Obama can raise a billion dollars for a stupid election, then how much could be raised for a Mars probe … given that NASA has been defunded in the latest Obama budget from doing anything other than propagandizing global warming.
Joshua Corning says:
February 15, 2012 at 3:19 pm
Well they are business partners, maybe that constitutes an unnatural act?
DaveE.
John Billings says:
February 15, 2012 at 3:44 pm
“You censors are not very good: you need to take out the replies too.”
============
They are all still there, near as I can tell.
Which one do you think is missing ?
£231,441 to investigate a “divergence problem”. The problem is they’re using a shoddy proxy for temperature. What’s to investigate?
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/research/grants.htm
Made front page on Today’s Sydney Morning Herald (printed version), the main target being Professor Bob Carter. It now it seems to have been relegated to the Environment section with a clarification from the Heartland institute, and the comments have been closed.
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/scientist-accepts-cash-for-climate-20120215-1t7ho.html
“I’m growing damned tired of your insinuations”.
What insinuations Anthony? None at all. Only verifiable facts. Back off. I accept that we are here in your parlour, you are the host, but do not ever accuse me of any insinuation. Take a walk and a deep breath and come back, or ban me from your parlour (for nothing), but do not accuse me of insinuating anything. If I have anything to say, I will tell you to your face.
REPLY: “on the quiet” is an insinuation, and I’m insulted by it, especially since this disclosure denied me the opportunity to do the project normally and to post the funding sources on the final product like is done with scientific papers. I’m not going to “back off” in defending myself against your insinuations that I did something wrong, when in fact I did not. What I am going to do is put you in the troll bin where your comments will be automatically given an extra level of moderation and then approved if they add something to the discussion. Be as upset as you wish. – Anthony Watts
Sometimes, I really wonder what is the goal of people like John Billings, and why they think throwing hissy fits on blog boards advances it?
In any case, this looks like a huge non-story. Unless they can produce a document where Heartland instructed scientists to “hide the incline” or some such, it doesn’t even register compared to the revelations of fraud at UEA. It’s not even a mote on the fact that the IPCC farmed out the writing of sections of its official documents to left-wing advocacy groups like the WWF and Greenpeace.
Have they no sense of decency, at long last? Apparently not.
Another observation about “The Heartland Leak”, or, as the Warmistas would hope “Heartlandgate”, is that the Warmistas are grabbing onto this like a rabid dog with a dead skunk. For them, it is hoped to counterbalance real scientific malfeasance by the Warmistas, as revealed by Climategate.
It will backfire if we point out the discrepency in funding between them and us.
Yes, I am part of the skeptic conspiracy!
If one inspects the new IPCC policy on conflicts of interest you will note that the only interest group targeted are corporate. Funding from other groups are, apparently, ok. Heartland describes itself as:
“The Heartland Institute is a 28-year-old national nonprofit research organization dedicated to finding and promoting ideas that empower people.”
On that basis, there would be no apparent conflict of interest if the group funded, say, IPCC scientists.
Heartland’s funding is actually described on their web page:
http://heartland.org/about
“Funding: Approximately 1,800 supporters support an annual budget of $6 million. Heartland does not accept government funding. Contributions are tax-deductible under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code”
So exactly what major secret has been exposed here that couldn’t be googled in a few seconds?
What am I missing?
u.k.(us) said @ February 15, 2012 at 4:00 pm
Anthony? Mods? Can you please censor John Billings so we don’t have to read his continual whining about being censored?
In 2003 they lost the science, when profound criticism prove Mann’s Hockeystick false and the solar connection was reinstalled.
The response was to avoid scientific discussion and instead control scientific bodies, access to journals, the peer review process, funding and everything else including the mainstream media.
This blew up with climategate. Reputations are gone since then.
The reponse was an upgrade in secrecy and, as reputations were gone anyways, not to bother about these any more.
After 2005, nature as well started to conspire against the global warming movement. Temperatures refused to go up, winters came back, sea levels and ocean heat content stalled, PDO is negative and AMO will follow soon. And a solar Maunder Minimum is around the corner.
With data brutally proving them wrong, low level behaviour now appears to the order of the day.
The trouble is trying to understand that for many AGW proponents , anything done in the name of ‘the cause ‘ is justified , so a fake document is not wrong, in fact it receives instant absolution from any sins by its use against the ‘evil deniers’ that threaten ‘the cause’
The cold reality this that is fabricated document has already entered the mythology of ‘the cause’ , it matters not one bit what Heartland can prove , for the ‘faithful’ they will always know its true.
The good news , in reality very few outside of usual suspects are running with this story in anyway , while even the BBC currently has nothing more than the article from ‘the Teams’ BBC bag boy and the Guardian are sticking the story in the web site cellar.
In any straight , who funds who and how much , fight its the AGW proponents that will come out looking worse in the public eye , so lets if it comes to such a fight it is straight .
The scanned “Strategy” document obviously stands out as the fake. It is the only scanned document, while the other pdf documents have the Heartland author in the metadata. Why would this be the lone scanned document?
As another person has pointed out, a Word document retains numerous imprints behind the scenes from the author. A scan (apparently with an Epson scanner) is a way that an amateur could easily scrub the MSWord metadata from the document.
According to the embedded information, it was scanned on Monday 2/13 and last modified on Tuesday 2/14:
2012-02-14T12:36:20-08:00
2012-02-13T12:41:52-08:00
2012-02-14T12:36:20-08:00
What am I missing? WRT warmist crowing, that is.
Somebody stole some financial documents, and a meeting agenda. Even attempting to look at it with a jaundiced eye, I don’t see anything scandalous. What did we learn from it? A think tank has donors, and spends money to influence public perception and opinon. And? That is what think tanks are supposed to do.
The only thing in it that is even mildly amusing is the “… dissuading teachers from teaching science” bit. That would be a chuckle inducing gaffe at best, but even that appears to be fabricated. Heartland says that document is made up. That is supported by the fact that the PDF file is unlike all of the others supposedly authored by Heartland in that it is a scan of a printed document (why?) and it has no author stored in the file properties. It reads like someone from Desmogblog, realizing that nobody is going to wade thru pages of BOD materials without dozing off, was trying to distill the Heartland documents into a short “talking points” piece, and they forgot to contain their snark so as to keep the document in the voice of the victim.
Weird that anyone thinks that there is anything of note in there.
On the other hand, it appears that the thief was an outsider who resorted to “social engineering” … aka identity theft … to obtain documents that, while not incriminating or even embarassing in any way that I can figure out, were private property. The people whining about “stolen” public emails that revealed gross misconduct, fraud, and potentially prosecutable crimes should be ashamed of their double standard. But they arent.
@shawn Halayka,
So you only made $44K/yr as a software engineer? Do you not live in the US? I make that much in 3.5 months as a professional software engineer here in California. That is not much money considering capital investments in addition to the software development.
There are lies, there are damned lies, then there’s R. Pachauri the railwayman.
The problem with lies is that sometimes you might not be aware you are making stuff up.
What were you saying again about lies?
John Billings says:
February 15, 2012 at 3:31 pm
No, Russ, I don’t think that “taking money on the quiet from left-wing sources is perfectly ok”.
[snip] > Nor do I think that taking money from right wing sources is OK
You’ve ratted yourself out John. Is it taking money on the quiet or taking money from left/right wing sources? Can we take money from middle of road sources on the quite? In the end, if the science is sound the source of funding is irrelevant. Unless, of course its government money. That is a different ball game. That money belongs to all of us.
Sorry, the above tags didn’t translate right. Should have been:
<xmp:ModifyDate>2012-02-14T12:36:20-08:00</xmp:ModifyDate>
<xmp:CreateDate>2012-02-13T12:41:52-08:00</xmp:CreateDate>
<xmp:MetadataDate>2012-02-14T12:36:20-08:00</xmp:MetadataDate>
BTW – “Heartland Leak” does not appear to be accurate. At this point, the person who released the documents appears to be someone outside the organization.
What I am saying is that you snipped my posts for no reason. Luckily, other posters preserved them. They were nothing special, just my personal thoughts, but they were censored by your staff for no reason, and they remain removed from the record.
I am especially surprised at this removal of posts in this storm of scientific integrity.
I will not, however, allow this to undermine my general faith in wuwt as a resource.
REPLY:I didn’t snip your post, another moderator did, and probably for the same insinuation I’m upset about. I’m waiting for a sincere apology for your insinuation of “on the quiet” no further posts until you do so. – Anthony
Anthony
Well, disinformation has a long record in the world of skullduggery. With very little funding and the truth a global juggernaut has been derailed. Not only should this have been suspected, it will get worse. These people play for keeps and everyone needs to be on guard and be even more careful with data and to keep to the truth 100%.
Michael Tobis @ 2:37
“Don’t misunderstand. I am confident that most of you, including our host, badly misunderstand the science of climate.
I thought I recognized the name:
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2011/record-for-f-words-in-climate-blog-post/
Thanks for cleaning up your language, Michael. Can you now clear up our misunderstanding of “climate science” without ranting? Perhaps start with why the atmosphere is getting cooler, while CO2 continues upward.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_January_2012.png
There is something seriously wrong when a faked document was added to the mix. Desmoblog needs to make a clarifying statement that the faked document “Confidential Memo: 2012 Heartland Climate Strategy,” as confirmed by Heartland, came from the email address that they claim the other documents came from and also make a statement that they never interfered / edited or added to the information received. They need to be very clear in informing the public that they have not colluded with the perpetrator of the crime.
The attack was to be expected. Big money, Big lies, anything goes… I just hope they don’t hire some heavies to emphasize the message… “A one way ticket” was already suggested by the ArchWarmist Pachauri…
On the positive side, it is now evident that they are getting desperate, desperate enough to fight.
As was already said “first they laugh at you, then they ignore you, then they fight you,and then you win”.
Keep going at it, Anthony, you are one step away from Victory.
Everyone needs money to live and do the things outside of eating and staying warm. Altruism is supposed to be part of human behaviour: it is not the idea that is bad, it is the amount that is involved, such that there is a human incentive to do what it takes to keep the money coming, and any explicit or implicit requirement to behave in a certain way to get the funds or keep them coming. There is nothing like this apparent.
I suppose it is time to put in the New York Times a side-by-side comparison of the warmist camp and the skeptic camp, and how much money each side has received to continue the fight or because he had a dog in the fight.
On the one side we have Gore and Suzuki and Hansen and Mann. On the other side we have Morano, Watts, Singer and Carter. We have the book sales of each and the funds each has received from them. On the Goracle side, we have millions, and this is outside Gore’s hundreds of millions. On the Morano side, we have the price of an SUV or two.
Simple chart. No need to interpret: if money is the reason to question moral behaviour, then the questions only go one way.
Will Nitschke,
Heartland’s mission is to influence public opinion and public policy. Go to their website, open their “Prospectus” and read it. All they talk about is media strategy, influencing key opinion makers, calls to legislators, writing newsletters for public officials, shaping regulation, etc. etc. You’re absolutely right, they are a 501(c)(3) funded by private individuals and corporations. And they make it very clear for those donors that their money is going to buy influence in government and public policy. Heartland is a perfectly legal non-profit political lobbying organization.
You may think the IPCC has many flaws, but I hope you recognize that its mission is to deliver unbiased information and not to advance a particular agenda.
WOW £6m in funding!
When do we find out who provides the hundreds of millions to greenpeace and the like?
the warmists are getting desperate – I see this as a good sign
Hansen says:
“Refusing the prizes would have been to our taxpayers’ detriment.”
All I see is that the gov’t continues to borrow money “for” me and that I derive negative benefit from Hansen’s awards.
His analysis of this point seems (not adequately explained and) deeply flawed.
15 Feb: Bloomberg: Simon Clark: Gore Likens Carbon to Subprime Debt in Plan to Repair Capitalism
Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore said investors in oil and gas companies who ignore the cost of emitting carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are making a mistake similar to those who invested in subprime mortgages.
“The value of the subprime mortgages was based on a false assumption,” Gore said yesterday in an interview. “In almost exactly the same way, the value of all of these carbon fuel reserves is based on a similarly absurd assumption.”
Gore made the analogy as Generation Investment Management LLP, the asset manager he founded with former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) executive David Blood, published a five-point plan titled “Sustainable Capitalism” to reform the investment industry. They want the proposals to help combat climate change and poverty as well as boost profit in the long term…
“The bitter experience that the subprime mortgages caused should be a reminder that stranded assets have the potential for doing a great deal of damage,” Gore said in a video link between Generation’s New York and London offices. The firm manages about $6.5 billion.
“These subprime carbon assets have an asserted value based on the assumption that it’s perfectly OK to put 90 million tons of global warming pollution into the atmosphere every 24 hours,” he said. “Actually it’s not.”…
Gore’s comparison of carbon and subprime debt comes a month after a group of U.K. investors and environmental campaigners wrote to Bank of England Governor Mervyn King urging a probe into whether the U.K.’s holdings of investments in greenhouse gas-emitting industries poses a risk to financial stability…
Gore and Blood (OR BLOOD AND GORE TO EVERYONE ELSE) said adoption of their proposals was necessary to restore public faith in capitalism, which they said had been eroded during the financial crisis, in which taxpayer funds were used to bail out banks and insurance companies…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-16/gore-likens-carbon-to-subprime-debt-in-plan-to-repair-capitalism.html
15 Feb: PDF: Generation Investment Management LLP: Sustainable Capitalism
http://www.efinancialnews.com/share/media/downloads/2012/02/4070000441.pdf
——————————————————————————–
I think you may be right. They are giving publicity to a non story that is going to force them to answer questions that they had hoped had gone away long ago. Strikes me, having ploughed through the “news items” that the “journalists”, in attempting to expose “Heartland”, are exposing their loyal readers to “the dark side” in an easily digestible format. It’s all beginning to look like a massive own goal.
“Watts found producing easily digestible climate information for less than it cost to publish this story” – yep, that’ll work.
So a man who makes his money selling video graphics for weather, and has a personal blog lots of people decide they want to read, is being accused of making money by hiring staff to produce new video graphics about weather extremes from public information available to anyone?
This act has caused a ruckus among bloggers who are themselves funded by special interest?
It appears to me that the implications of what the the website will show, is clear to someone. That someone isnt happy.
Am I correct in the implications here?
Anthony,
I will apologise for the insinuation of “on the quiet” if you can point out where it occurred.
If you can specifically point out what has upset you, as a reasonable man, I will of course look at my behaviour.
I am disappointed we have come to this, I really am. I like contributing, I like being part of things, and, like everybody, I like being liked.
However, if you want me to apologise for somethng that I don’t see as a wrongdoing, then the result will be that I will no longer enter posts on your website.
You can communicate with me at alxxxxx@yahoo.com
I will be happy to apologise as soon as you point out my wrongdoing.
Kindly,
John Billings
REPLY: You can’t even remember what you’ve written? Here it is, bolded below. Again, I’ve been denied the opportunity to disclose it myself as intended, when the website was finished and went online. – Anthony
John Billings
alxxxxx@yahoo.com
[ip deleted]
Submitted on 2012/02/15 at 2:49 pm
u.k.(us) says:
February 15, 2012 at 2:42 pm J
John Billings says:
February 15, 2012 at 2:05 pm
If there is any fault here, and I am not sure there is, it is that Anthony should have flagged money he has received. It is hard to square the persistent flagging of warmists’ funding while keeping quiet about your own. It smacks of double standards.
-================
Except, Anthony’s project is privately funded, whereas his flagging usually relates to publicly funded misadventures.
To take Anthony to task, for using private money to further his/our understanding (of anything) is patently ridiculous.
No, sorry, that’s incorrect, “To take Anthony to task, for using private money to further his/our understanding (of anything) is patently ridiculous” is wholly erroneous.
Taking money from right-wing thintanks on the quiet is a dirty business. Please don’t be so naive as to pretend that this is not so.
We need to.demonstrate that we are above the follies and financial misbehaviour of the other side. If Anthony had needed money, he could have outright asked for it (and he would have got it) instead of taking money on the quiet.
John Billings!
Which part of wattsupwiththat is not funded by have you failed to understand?
This is a new as yet unannounced, (until the scandal arose,) project!
Some people are unteachable!
DaveE.
R. Gates says:
February 15, 2012 at 12:09 pm
Heartland said:
“But honest disagreement should never be used to justify the criminal acts…”
—–
So Heartand is also strongly condemning the actions of those who released the Climategate emails?
—
But were the e-mail made up??? Nope. And we all got to see the unseemly, nasty world of climate science up close and personal.
So, when is NCAR going off the grid??? (heh)
And when is R. Gates going off the grid???
Peter says:
February 15, 2012 at 4:29 pm
You may think the IPCC has many flaws, but I hope you recognize that its mission is to deliver unbiased information and not to advance a particular agenda.
Incredible. Every time I read something like this, I remind myself never to underestimate the power of human stupidity.
“Did you accept money from the fossil fuel industry?”
“Well, that depends on what the defintion of ‘fuel industry’ is.”
Slick Willy rides again.
It was done by Colonel Mustard, in the Oval Office, with a cigar.
Pass the popcorn.
Equal pay for equal work!
I think for $44k the NOAA wouldn’t be able to conduct a feasibility study on whether they can actually do Anthony’s project, much less actually get it off the ground.
Peter says:
February 15, 2012 at 4:29 pm
Would that it were so. The mission is to determine human influences on climate. No other causes, just human. So they only look for human influences, what a surprise!
DaveE.
As long as Heartland is receiving private money, I don’t give a rat’s arse what they’re doing w/it.
Listen up, warmers, we don’t want to have to keep repeating it. It’s TAXPAYER money that we taxpayers are concerned about, not private. If you receive money from governments for your occupation, you’re working for its citizens, not for yourselves. Get it?
Actually, Varek, the case is more apt than you know. There is not now, and never has been, any evidence that for a normal, healthy human exposure to second hand smoke constituted a health hazard. Heartland (and Dr. Singer) were associated with research on second hand smoke, not smoking itself. The whole second-hand smoke panic is precisely analogous to the CAGW scare in that pseudoscientific propaganda promoted by self-interested bureaucrats and parroted by a sensationalist press led to an “everybody knows that …” phenomenon that is simply untrue. Second-hand smoke is unpleasant, smelly, and can cause momentary irritation to the eyes, and ruins the overstuffed furniture for resale. But dangerous to human health it is not, except in the case of extremely susceptible persons (e.g. childhood asthmatics) who are oversensitive to any foreign substance in the air (e.g. Fabreze).
Junk science is still alive and well, as the reaction of the numerous kiddiots who have posted in this thread demonstrates. But the pscience is losing, and perhaps when the American people wake up — as the Brits and Aussies are beginning to do — to the enormous damage “green” lunacy and lies are now doing to both the economy and the environment, they will begin to take a more serious look at the distinction between real science and junk science.
And at that point, the pitchforks and torches may appear…
Here are just some of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) past & present funders. I see big oil, fossil fuels, nuclear, green lobbyists and the interests of the insurance industry. Why does this kind of thing not get attacked by Warmists? Why does this not raise red flags? Yet a $44,000 single payment to do science research raises blue murder. Disgraceful.
British Petroleum
Central Electricity Generating Board
Eastern Electricity
Greenpeace International
Irish Electricity Supply Board
National Power
Nuclear Installations Inspectorate
Reinsurance Underwriters and Syndicates
Shell
World Wildlife Fund for Nature
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/about/history/
[snip – policy]
Anthony – they are attacking you in the only way they know how – indirectly, as I think your position and methodology are sound. It’s character assassination. Stand your principled ground. This is in no way comparable to either of the ClimateGate iterations or the continuing battle on full disclosure rer Mann and his emails.
I just read the faked document. Besides the obvious problem with meta-data, and the fact that it is the only scanned document, here are some highlights:
“We will also pursue additional support from the Charles G. Koch Foundation. ….We … expect to push up their level of support in 2012 and gain access to their network of philanthropists, if our focus
continues to **** align with their interests****.” Leftism 101 — the Koch bogeyman that makes sure you support their “interests”.
“two key points that are effective at dissuading teachers from teaching ***science.***” Fruedian slip by the hoaxster. People who question upside down Tiljander are Neanderthals who oppose science.
“At present we sponsor the NIPCC to ***undermine*** the official United Nation’s IPCC report” Uh huh, so the Heartland people are not sincere, they are just out to “undermine”. This hoaxster is a laugh.
“Heartland is part of a growing network of groups *** working *** the climate issues” Uh huh, the Heartland Institute actually has a document saying they are “working” the climate issues.
Thanks for the laugh dude.
Typo
Why does this king of thing
Why does this kind of thing
[Fixed. -ModE the compulsive fixer one 😉 ]
This is a game of media “gotcha” and unfortunately WWUT is affiliated with the team who lost the most recent set.
Of course, it’s a long match, and it ain’t over until the plus sized lady sings.
…and equal funding, we need equal funding of course!
Good luck on riding the tiger, Mr. Watts! This will bring a lot of first time viewers to WUWT. How about a quick post on the most important flaws of the cAGW concept?
So then, have they solved the problems of non-linear fluid dynamics? How about deterministic chaos and climate? Clouds? Is it now warming because Heartland funds your projects or those of anyone else? Is accumulated cyclone energy now rising uncontrollably? How about spatial and temporal aliasing in the temperature records? Have they now figured out a way to tease temperature signals from the multi-variate response of tree rings and sediment varves?
I am not a skeptic because of climategate. This can only change the mind of the ignorant.
pat says: (actually quoting)
February 15, 2012 at 4:33 pm
Gore Likens Carbon to Subprime Debt in Plan to Repair Capitalism
I trust all are familiar with Godwin’s Law, and suggest we need a similar refrain for Al Gore. Besides, Gore was one that thought signing over deeds to houses to folks without money or jobs was a grand idea. How much has that cost US tax payers?
————————————————————————-
John Billings has yet to say something educational, interesting, insightful (contrast with inciteful), ironic, or funny. What is he doing here at WUWT?
David says:
February 15, 2012 at 2:07 pm
R. Gates says:
February 15, 2012 at 12:09 pm
Heartland said:
“But honest disagreement should never be used to justify the criminal acts…”
—–
So Heartand is also strongly condemning the actions of those who released the Climategate emails?
============================
Private organization, vs publicly funded CRU, get it?
—-
Theft is theft…get it?
The UK police would not have raided Tallbloke, if there had there been no crime they were investigating, get it?
Craig Goodrich says:
February 15, 2012 at 4:55 pm
So second-hand smoke is only a health hazard to children with asthma.
I feel so much better knowing that. Should we tattoo the useless little eaters on the forehead with a crimson “A” so everyone knows not to smoke around them?
These guys travel in same crowd with those who tried to deny HIV as the cause of AIDS.
Careful buddy. When you lay down with dogs you get up with fleas…
One huge difference between the Heartland Institute and the likes of the IPCC is that we are not forced to pay for the former.
If Anthony has a crystal ball that will tell him everyone who’s going to eventually contribute to the web site before it is finished then have the web site miraculously turned up before it is designed to disclose everyone who may contribute then I would like to borrow his crystal ball and play the lottery (and perhaps his developers who can turn up a web site before designing it).
Do you realize how silly and utterly irrational it is to play this angle? Have you nothing better to do than post absurdities?
Jo Nova has a nice blog post on this topic too.
Logic-gate: The Smog blog exposes irrational rage. Innumeracy. And Heartlands efficient success.
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/02/logic-gate-the-smog-blog-exposes-irrational-rage-innumeracy-and-heartlands-efficient-success/
John Billings says:
February 15, 2012 at 4:39 pm
“However, if you want me to apologise for somethng that I don’t see as a wrongdoing, then the result will be that I will no longer enter posts on your website.”
Concern troll.
I am off to bed now but a few final thoughts.
This story should now expose the LIE that sceptics are a well funded denialists machine. Just ask the climate scientist Ball who had to appeal for funds for his defence in court. I do hope that Warmists can see from a lot of the references above that you are being lied to.
Watts could make his life a lot easier by saying he was mistaken about CAGW and apply for funds to do research and get LOTS of it. Yet he stands his ground to seek truth. That’s all I want.
Good night and keep up the fantastic work Mr. Watts. We are almost there. ;>)
Great blog. It appears you have been noticed by the powers that be, as they have unleashed a small contingent of useful idiots upon the blog. The blog must be threatening to muck up some important cash stream, otherwise it would have been ignored. Global warming is all about hot cash streams.
Advisable to take a closer look at one of DeSmogBlog’s top bloggers, a guy who has been there for all but three months of the site’s existence. That’s anti-skeptic book author Ross Gelbspan, who appears to have largely invented the idea of skeptic climate scientists acting in a way that supposedly parallels old tobacco industry tactics. That’s also the very same person I covered my 2010 article in The Daily Caller, “Is the ‘Columbo of climate change’ someone who would rather avoid Columbo-like questions?” http://dailycaller.com/2010/12/11/is-the-columbo-of-climate-change-someone-who-would-rather-avoid-columbo-like-questions/
What we see here is yet another manifestation of AGW promoter’s insecurity with the IPCC’s ability to defend its climate assessments. AGW can’t support itself relying in its own merits? No problem, smear the critics who point this out, by any means possible.
Look at all the moonbats proving themselves to be exactly what we thought they were. To bad that most of them have been so thoroughly indoctrinated that their compromised cognitive faculties has made them incapable of recognizing that they are nothing more then mindless tools.
Interresting that the “faked” document is full of figures that are confirmed in the other documents, and that much of the content has been confirmed either from the other documents or the people named (including the K12 curriculum: David Wojick did confirm working on this for the Heartland Institute). It seems the faked document is extremely precise and factual. Troubling for a fake. The Heartland Institute has said it was fake, therefore it must be fake. Lets not question their integrity.
[SNIP: Enough. Go Pick a fight elsewhere. -REP]
C’mon, folks, the scandal is settled.
Craig Goodrich,
So the American Cancer Society and the American Medical Association are promoting junk science? Please explain.
I agree, second hand smoking is a very relevant analogy to climate change. Only with climate change, the potential impact on society and the economy is much greater, so opinions are much stronger and entrenched. In fact with climate change, opinions are so strong that some people are questioning the honesty, integrity, and competence of our most prominent scientific and academic organizations. I’m not sure anyone ever went that far with the ACS or the AMA, but then the issue was not nearly as heated as climate change is.
I am having difficulty believing how amazingly stupid the people behind this were. They managed through lying to Heartland staff to actually obtain some genuine documents, then they alter or outright fabricate one of the documents they release onto the web in such an way that it is obviously scanned, unlike like the other documents. They had a weak story about funding then they went and totally blew it, making their theft, fraud and epic stupidity the story. Now any of their favourite alarmist journalists who have commented on this will have to make retractions with regard to any comment based on the falsified document.
Were sceptics stupid enough to alter or falsify the Climategate emails? This incident truly speaks to the character of AGW believers. Lies, fraud and epic stupidity.
Peter says:
February 15, 2012 at 4:29 pm
“You may think the IPCC has many flaws, but I hope you recognize that its mission is to deliver unbiased information and not to advance a particular agenda.”
Peter, the mission of the UNIPCC is to prepare the ground for worldwide taxation of CO2 emissions and a share of the proceeds will be redistributed by its parent organisation, the UN, in one form or another, as we constantly see during the COP conferences where 200 billion a year or similar numbers are targeted for this climate related manufactured crisis. Ok, the UNIPCC has failed so far, but not for the lack of trying.
To find more information about this, buy Donna LaFromboise’s book The Delinquent Teenager.
The plan to use CO2 for this purpose goes back at least to
1975; `Endangered Atmosphere’ Conference: Where the Global Warming Hoax Was Born
Mead, Schneider, Holdren and Lovelock
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/highlights/Fall_2007.html
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles%202007/GWHoaxBorn.pdf
Mead:
“What we need from scientists are
estimates, presented with sufficient
conservatism and plausibility but at
the same time as free as possible from
internal disagreements that can be
exploited by political interests, that
will allow us to start building a system
of artificial but effective warnings,
warnings which will parallel the
instincts of animals who flee before
the hurricane, pile up a larger store of
nuts before a severe winter, or of
caterpillars who respond to impending
climatic changes by growing thicker
coats [sic].”
Anthony: this should clear everything up to the satisfaction of all.
I have a one-quarter interest in a very small gas station just outside a small-ish town in the middle of British Columbia. I have therefore donated no money whatsoever to WUWT for fear of the consequences if the news of Big Oil contributions were ever leaked (or stolen). Ditto for Climate Audit, Bishop Hill, and the rest. Nothing. Nada. Not a cent.
There. Is everybody happy now?
Continue your good work with a clear conscience, Anthony.
Hasn’t what the Guardian names “one of the most prominent anti-science blogs” been awarded the title of “the best SCIENCE blog in 2011”?
Correct would be “one of the most prominent anti-climate-change-science blogs”.
Keep going, Anthony.
R. Gates says:
February 15, 2012 at 5:13 pm
“Theft is theft…get it?
The UK police would not have raided Tallbloke, if there had there been no crime they were investigating, get it?”
The appropriate word of leftists, who often happen to be also Global Warming alarmists, is not “theft”, R. Gates, but “leak”; and ALWAYS enthusiastically greeted by leftists. Oh – with the exception of climategate I and II, of course. Because those were evil leaks…
The law suit whic led to the EPA Endangerment Finding, Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, (2007) was brought by a group of highly visible and well-funded NGO’s and Environmental Law Groups, supported by politicians from twelve US states and three cities, in one of the most creatively constructed legal suits ever mounted. The gambit of suing the EPA, in order to force them to do something that was their primary objective anyway, was a masterpiece of legal machination, especially when there are so many connections between the litigants and the EPA. These were the organisations involved:
Center for Biological Diversity,
Center for Food Safety,
Conservation Law Foundation,
Environmental Advocates,
Environmental Defense,
Friends of the Earth,
Greenpeace,
International Center for Technology Assessment,
National Environmental Trust,
Natural Resources Defense Council,
Sierra Club,
Union of Concerned Scientists, and
U.S. Public Interest Research Group
All these groups receive major funding from the eco-billionaire foundations; for example, just in 2010, Environmental Defense received $300,000 from the Goldman Foundation, to “Create a practical and effective implementation plan for California’s Global Warming Solutions Act”, on top of the $1.1 million they received in 2009 from the Joyce Foundation. It was that foundation which had provided the start-up funds for Richard Sandor, Maurice Strong and Al Gore’s now defunct Chicago Climate Exchange in 2003, when then Senator Barack Obama was a Joyce director.
In 2008, Natural Resources Defense Council received $500,000 from the Joyce Foundation to fight against new coal plants and $450,000 again in 2010 for the same purpose. This is just scratching the surface of the massive funding made available to these groups by the “liberal” foundations, including George Soros and his Open Society Institute, the Packard Foundation, Ford, Sandler, Grantham and the like.
The Centre for Biological Diversity has an annual budget in excess of $7million, and in 2009, they opened a $17million Climate Law Center in San Francisco, with initial funding of $6.3 million from the California Community Foundation, The Sandler Foundation, The Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund, and others. Their stated aim is “to establish new state and federal laws that will eliminate energy generation by the burning of fossil fuels – particularly coal and oil shale.”
Anthony should have applied to the EPA for a grant, they have loadsa money to give away:
2 December 2009
Researchers Ron Falta and Larry Murdoch from South Carolina’s Clemson University have received an $891,000 grant from the US Environmental Protection Agency to study the safe storage of CO2 in geological formations located below the earth’s surface.
EPA Awards $1.9 Million in Environmental Justice Grants http://tinyurl.com/84kduwh
Release Date: 10/05/2010, http://www.epa.gov/compliance/environmentaljustice/grants/ej-smgrants-recipients-2010.html
http://www.enn.com/ecosystems/article/3366/print
More than 2,200 nonprofit groups have received grants from the Environmental Protection Agency over the last decade, including those that lobby and sometimes sue the agency. One of the most prominent, the Natural Resources Defense Council, was cited in a recent audit for failing to properly document more than a third of the $3.3 million (euro2.7 million) it received in three EPA grants.
More EPA beneficiaries, to fund “education and outreach”, “emissions trading investigation”, “green power promotion ” and the like. This is just a selection, there are many more.
Earth Day Coalition
Award Date: 16/06/2010 Cum Award: $25,000
Environmental Defense
Award Date: 23/08/2006 Cum Award: $415,000
Environmental Defense Fund Inc.
Award Date: 22/12/2010 Cum Award: $400,000
Environmental Defense Fund Inc.
Award Date: 19/06/2008 Cum Award: $70,000
Environmental Law Institute
Award Date: 03/08/2010 Cum Award: $225,000
Greenhouse Gas Experts Networks Inc.
Award Date: 16/12/2010 Cum Award: $162,117
H. John Heinz III Ctr for Sci Econ & the Env
Award Date: 28/10/2008 Cum Award: $250,000
Natural Resources Defense Council
Award Date: 10/11/2010 Cum Award: $1,150,123
Winrock International
Award Date: 25/06/2009 Cum Award: $362,114
Winrock International
Award Date: 16/06/2008 Cum Award: $415,600
Winrock International
Award Date: 10/09/2009 Cum Award: £832,520
World Resources Institute
Award Date: 22/09/2006 Cum Award: £479,014
World Resources Institute
Award Date: 23/06/2008 Cum Award: £400,000
World Resources Institute
Award Date: 17/08/2010 Cum Award: £200,000
World Resources Institute
Award Date: 06/07/2010 Cum Award: £315,000
United Nations Environment Programme
Award Date: 16/12/2010 Cum Award: £1,095,000
Reblogged this on contrary2belief and commented:
It’s a trap.
R. Gates says:
February 15, 2012 at 5:13 pm
Theft is theft…get it?
The UK police would not have raided Tallbloke, if there had there been no crime they were investigating, get it?
==========
R. Gates, you know exactly where the dividing line between rational and irrational thought is, then you make a statement that sits on the razors edge, and watch the replies.
What would we do without ya 🙂
Wonderful Blog. Looks like it has been noticed by the powers that be, as they have unleashed a small troupe of useful idiots. The log must be threatening to muck up or has already mucked up some cash stream. I am impressed by the low quality of the trolls that have become active, it must still be a low budget operation
JC Leblond says:
February 15, 2012 at 5:27 pm
“Interresting that the “faked” document is full of figures that are confirmed in the other documents, and that much of the content has been confirmed either from the other documents or the people named (including the K12 curriculum: David Wojick did confirm working on this for the Heartland Institute). It seems the faked document is extremely precise and factual. ”
You mean the faker has READ the other documents before he produced it? Un-be-lie-vable.
Peter,
Do some research. EPA changed acceptance criteria to 90% CI from usual 95% and still the RR was less than 2 based on the meta study done. Look up what a meta study is to understand the mine field that they create by themselves. A judge threw out the EPA finding only to be overruled on a technicality…………that his court did not have jurisdiction I believe. None of the issues of fact changed.
Now I am not as convinced as some that second hand smoke cannot cause health issues but the science used by the EPA did not show that it was, so they changed the criteria. Part of the problem is what exposure to second hand smoke means. The levels of exposure are several orders of magnitude in variance. At high levels, e.g. mom and dad each smoke several packs a day, I would be surprised if it didn’t raise the risk of lung cancer.
Reminds me of what I believe Mark Twain once said… “A Lie goes halfway around the world while the Truth is putting on its shoes.”
Truth is on your side, Anthony!
Keep Up the Good Work!
All the Best!
Jim Jelinski
I am not bothered by the fact that Greenpeace raises hundreds of millions of dollars a year to fund their programs.
I am not bothered that the WWF raises similar amounts for their propaganda.
The Heartland has every right to raise money in an effort to get their message out the way that they want to.
But it bothers me how publicly funded groups take tax payers money to advance their own unproven causes (NASA, IPCC etc) and I am annoyed that people would accuse WUWT of taking money “on the quiet” to produce a web-site dedicated to the disclosure of “public” data that does not appear to be easily available to the public. Some head-shaking is in order here.
Anthony,
I believe your blog is no longer a blog. You have turned the corner to a truly powerful media outlet and the backlash from the press was misjudged. To imagine that they would jump on such a low amount of money as an incentive to post bad information. Do these idiots even know you run a business? Then to fail to grock the fact that you would be publishing the SAME data AGW promotes. FEAR!
The idiots should be singing your praises, yet you get scorn. International scorn!!
Very,very impressive and thank you — for the millionth time.
You have a mission, whether you choose accept it or not …. 🙂
R. Gates says:
February 15, 2012 at 5:13 pm
David says:
February 15, 2012 at 2:07 pm
R. Gates says:
February 15, 2012 at 12:09 pm
Heartland said:
“But honest disagreement should never be used to justify the criminal acts…”
—–
So Heartand is also strongly condemning the actions of those who released the Climategate emails?
============================
Private organization, vs publicly funded CRU, get it?
—-
Theft is theft…get it?
The UK police would not have raided Tallbloke, if there had there been no crime they were investigating, get it?
============================================================
That was beneath you, R. Gates.
Well at least one thing has been accomplished.
A whole pack of CAGWsters have been lured over here to show just how naive and uninformed they really are.
het Anthony. I dont know any of the facts.
what I do know is this – tell it straight. warts and all.
It’s always the coverup and the lies that get you, like it got them in climategate 1 and 2.
warts and all mate.
Quote: “Yesterday afternoon, two advocacy groups posted online several documents they claimed were The Heartland Institute’s 2012 budget, fundraising, and strategy plans. Some of these documents were stolen from Heartland, at least one is a fake, and some may have been altered.”
Faked and altered documents – I don’t see the problem here, that is simply standard operating proceedure for the CAGW extremists and typical of that which the CAGW supporters support.
@Richards in Vancouver –
Uh oh. I put gasoline in my car earlier today and I support this site too. I guess that makes the link between Watts and big oil even more rampant.
🙂
[SNIP: Peter, insults are not witty banter and the theme of second hand smoke is off-topic and done on this thread. -REP]
Ahahaha, ahahaha, ahahaha, ROFLMFAO, this is the best they got? $44k worth of funding? Are you freaking kidding me? Its worse than we thought! … hahaha .. these people are truly desperate!
Anthony, keep up the good work! and I hope you get $44M next time, at least then perhaps it would be work talking about. And your stuff is the rare exception that is probably worth the $44M.
This crap is just priceless!
Craig Goodrich says:
February 15, 2012 at 4:55 pm
You have fallen prey to a red herring, diversionary tactic. Don’t scratch the fleas. They only bite harder.
R. Gates says:
February 15, 2012 at 5:13 pm
“Theft is theft…get it?”
Yes, we get it. You want to excuse fraudsters in the publicly funded, orthodox climate science community by foisting upon us a false equivalence between the climategate leaker and con artists who misappropriated ho-hum details from a skeptical foundation. Fail.
JC Leblond says:
February 15, 2012 at 5:27 pm
“Interresting that the “faked” document is full of figures that are confirmed in the other documents…”
Interesting that someone cut and pasted a fake page together from remnants of others? For the life of me, I cannot imagine why.
Peter says:
February 15, 2012 at 5:31 pm
“…some people are questioning the honesty, integrity, and competence of our most prominent scientific and academic organizations.”
What do you mean “our”, Kemo Sabe?
Let me get this straight. Because his beliefs are not the true beliefs as “proved” by the models, Watts is the antichrist and has the ethics of a diseased wombat for accepting Heartland money –some of which is fossil fuel industry money– to put together a website that displays government, i.e. YOUR, data in a human readable/digestible form. Meanwhile Phil Jones is the second coming for breaking the law (FOIA) and inciting others to do the same, because his cause is just. The Team actively tried to discredit and destroy the careers of those who disagreed with them, but that’s OK because they have truthiness on their side. I don’t get it.
If the whole memo talking about preventing teachers from teaching science in the classroom is debunked, then what’s the problem? If it isn’t, then I think Anthony’s hands are clean if he breaks all ties to them. It’s really that simple. Do people honestly expect that only one side of this debate can legitimately provide funds, i.e. Greenpeace, WWF, Sierra Club? Why do their funds and those they fund not produce a cry of bias? Or perhaps we know that accusations are always true–well at least those from the Left & the Greens–and protestations of innocence are always lies. If that’s the case, then it seems to me that the Spanish Inquisition and Salem quit far too soon, and we waste far too much money on our legal system.
[SNIP: Sorry, but the second hand smoke topic is DONE. -REP]
David says:
February 15, 2012 at 2:07 pm
R. Gates says:
February 15, 2012 at 12:09 pm
Heartland said:
“But honest disagreement should never be used to justify the criminal acts…”
—–
So Heartand is also strongly condemning the actions of those who released the Climategate emails?
============================
Private organization, vs publicly funded CRU, get it?
—-
Theft is theft…get it?
The UK police would not have raided Tallbloke, if there had there been no crime they were investigating, get it?
————————————–
Really, I do get it. The police are investigating a POSSIBILITY of a crime. The Heartland theft was apparently theft, and they have the right to make this accusation. This does not mean your allegation of the FOIA release as being analogous is accurate. It likely is not.
******************
John Billings says: February 15, 2012 at 2:19 pm
1. The Heartland Institute is a free market thinktank. Their goal is to promote the free market , or libertarianism, or something. Either way, it is a right-wing political organisation. Were not the alarm bells ringing when they offered you money?
******************
Pardon me, but . . . Really???
I think your statement rather sums up the entire situation. The thought that Free Markets = Right Wing = Alarm bells, leads automatically to; they are bad people and not allowed to provide support to anything they believe to be worthwhile.
Why is it the enviro-nazis believe that their point of view is absolutely correct and anyone questioning it is absolutely wrong? Believing only they should be funded and allowed free speech while everyone else should be held to standards that are only defined when they, the enviro-nazis, believe they have been breeched?
JC Leblond says:
February 15, 2012 at 5:27 pm
Interresting that the “faked” document is full of figures that are confirmed in the other documents, and that much of the content has been confirmed either from the other documents or the people named (including the K12 curriculum: David Wojick did confirm working on this for the Heartland Institute). It seems the faked document is extremely precise and factual. Troubling for a fake. The Heartland Institute has said it was fake, therefore it must be fake. Lets not question their integrity.
============================================
Read up…… it’s pretty clear this was a fake.
Lets drop the euphemisms the FORGED document!
Who ever used social engineering to get the documents to be sent to the wrong email address, was guilty of criminal impersonation, and theft by deception, and wire fraud (used a phone) not to mention all those who are opening themselves up to slander and libel charges and some pretty hefty legal fees.
In the United States, mail and wire fraud is any fraudulent scheme to intentionally deprive another of property or honest services via mail or wire communication. It has been a federal crime in the United States since 1872.
California’s “False Impersonation” Laws
Penal Code 529 PC
California’s false personation laws make it a crime to impersonate someone else in order to harm that person, or to gain a benefit for yourself.
Theft By Deception
Iin the state of California crimes related to fraud, include the crime of theft by deception.
It is where a person deceives in order to gain access to goods, property or services.
This may bankrupt some of the major CAGW media shills, and will surely destroy any shred of credibility that they might have had as honest journalists, given they have violated numerous primary responsibilities of a real journalist.
The exact charges will of course depend on the jurisdiction the criminal activity took place in, but I think who ever did this has opened a very large can of legal trouble if they can be found.
Larry
Anthony you are being purposefully targeted for character assassination by innuendo.
The whole thing is totally political. You are a threat. You have to understand that nothing absolutely nothing is beneath these people. They are absolutely unprincipled and totally dishonest.
I guarantee you have made the George Soros/moveon.org enemies list. Be careful my friend.
There is nothing they will not stoop to.
this is a little O/T, but I followed the link to Hansen’s reply and then clicked on a link he thinks is a good analysis of billionaires and the climate crisis…(hint: Outing the Oligarchy)
Which is a screed. A leftist screed, naturally. OWS-type screed, Van Jones type screed. Which has this riveting passage in the Oct 13th entry
“Today’s crisis of capitalism requires a rethink of the system that governs it. If unruly capital was a foreign dictator, the US State Department would demand that it step down because it’s lost legitimacy, seize state assets until they can be sorted out, then fund fair elections for new government to decide how do we distribute resources to fulfill the peoples needs and aspirations.”
http://ifg.org/programs/plutonomy.html
Sad, really
Amazing! Sounds like some of the political mud-smearing campaigns currently happening. I wouldn’t be surprised to find this is the work of someone in government.
Anthony, I’ve registered an official complaint with the BBC over Mr. Black’s journalistic integrity (ho ho!).
Sorry you have to put up with this trash from Britland, as well as from your own side of the pond.
REPLY: thanks, I was already researching it myself, but it appears since I’m not a British citizen paying a license, I have no recourse. Or, am I in error? – Anthony
Anthony, when the smoke clears, I think that the funding differences between the climate realists vs the CAGW brigade will be embarrassing for the alarmists. The more the issue of funding is brought to light to the general public, the better.
Steve in SC says:
February 15, 2012 at 6:08 pm
“I guarantee you have made the George Soros/moveon.org enemies list. Be careful my friend.
There is nothing they will not stoop ”
During COP15 George Soros suggested to “finance” the envisioned 100bn USD yearly redistribution by using the “Special Drawing Rights” of the IMF; basically that’s a kind of paper currency that the IMF can create out of thin air (but has to back with some collateral, i.e. money that the member states loan to the IMF, as far as I understood it). He made it sound like this way, the money would just be there. You could see the dollar signs in his eyes as you watched him explain it.
He is SO behind CAGW. Well at least he was, I don’t know if it’s still high up on his todo list. Everything to wreck nations – he always makes fortunes when a nation’s currency fails.
We know your record, Anthony, integrity of data and honest dealing.
Its rather odd that they are trying to kill the data being available to the general public. what is so damming about the real data that they must stop its dissemination?
The truth in plain sight must scare them to death…
Continue the good fight Anthony!!!
$54 billion of taxpayers’ subsidies for nuclear is surely something to throw back at the antinuclear Greenies, who conveniently ignored Monbiot and Hansen’s nuclear advocacy. this appears to be a taboo subject on warmist AND sceptic sites.
16 Feb: WSJ: Obama Unveils Loan Guarantees for Nuclear Plant
By HENRY J. PULIZZI And CHRISTINE BUURMA
Under the loan-guarantee program, the government promises to assume a company’s debt obligations if it defaults on debt incurred for the projects. Because new nuclear reactors cost billions of dollars to develop, the loan guarantees can be a key step for energy companies that plan to undertake such projects…
The U.S. Department of Energy has the authority for $18.5 billion in loan guarantees. The administration’s fiscal-2011 budget request seeks to triple that amount to more than $54 billion.
Energy Secretary Steven Chu, speaking at a press briefing Tuesday, declined to say when the second nuclear loan guarantee might be issued. Along with Southern Co., Scana Corp., Constellation Energy Group Inc. and NRG Energy Inc. were on a short list of companies with projects still in the running for federal loan backing as of May.
“We’re working with the applicants as fast as we can to get through these processes,” Mr. Chu said.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704804204575069301926799046.html
John Billings said @ February 15, 2012 at 4:39 pm
I wish…
@Watts
OK. I’ll assume from your evasion of answering straight questions that you have not read the leaked documents. I’ll help you. Those documents contain:
“We have also pledged to help raise around $90,000 in 2012 for Anthony Watts to help him create a new website to track temperature station data.”
The documents also contain evidence that shows Heartland is funded by fossil industry money (amongst others). Do you need a diagram drawn for you to understand how your claim that you do not received dirty fossil industry money is false?
> “..why it is OK for the CRU..”
If you want to talk about CRU funding, start another thread. Don’t try and distract from the subject of this thread: you receiving money from the fossil industry contrary to your denial of the same.
Further, if you were genuine in your claims about wanting open and honest dialog, you would be condemning Heartland’s agenda to “keep opposing voices out” and “dissuading teachers from teaching science”. But you are doing nothing but conducting a weak personal damage limitation exercise.
CONGRATULATIONS! I am breaking out the champagne and celebrating this news story.
The Heartland institute has been most obviously targeted and now you are being attacked also.
These attacks are merely ad hominem suggestions that your funding somehow taints all your work. The FACT is there is not a shred of credible scientific evidence for this smear campaign. There is no “smoking gun” as we have all seen countless examples of in the Climategate emails (where the Hockey Team pervert the peer review process and are seen to express doubts as to the “settled” man-made Global Warming meme).
To borrow and adapt a quote from Margaret Thatcher, “I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single scientific argument left.”
Cheer Up Anthony ! You and Heartland with your wretchedly miniscule budgets are having an enormous impact and the “Hockey Team” is scared witless and fighting like a cornered animal.
If Richard Black’s article is to be believed they are particularly scared by ONE DONOR to Heartland….unbelievable as it may seem the media mouthpieces for the Greens appear to believe that ONE DONOR could be impacting world opinion on CAGW in a nefarious undermining manner! YIKES! They are actually frightened by this ONE PERSON who might undermine all the “settled science”!
The greenhouse conjecture is a fraud – there are no two ways about it. Heartland and Watt need all the support they can get to continue their role in exposing it. I do so at my own cost – mostly time – because the errors are glaring when you know and think about the physics involved.
Sites like SkS and SoD continually block me because they have no answers. Under yet another new name I have just posted a copy of my most recent post on WUWT which you can see (or may be able to see) on their site with this link if they have not yet deleted it. If they don’t then watch the subsequent discussion if you want to see their arguments thrashed.
http://scienceofdoom.com/roadmap/atmospheric-radiation-and-the-greenhouse-effect/#comment-16066
If they have deleted it by the time you read this, then you may read it, along with many others previously deleted, at the foot of this page of my site: http://climate-change-theory.com/Science_of_Doom.html
From Politico:
“Finally, I don’t know why they would think I’m neutral,” Revkin added. “I’m a passionate advocate, actually — for reality. By that I mean I try to keep in mind the full picture of greenhouse-driven climate change revealed by science, including aspects that are well understood and those that remain veiled by durable complexity and real uncertainty.”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0212/72919_Page3.html#ixzz1mVb5TSvU
EternalOptimist: “het Anthony. I dont know any of the facts.
what I do know is this – tell it straight. warts and all.
It’s always the coverup and the lies that get you, like it got them in climategate 1 and 2.
warts and all mate.”
Nice try. What exactly are you insinuating? Since you “don’t know any of the facts”, here they are. Watts wants to create a web-based service, free-of-charge, to allow citizens to easily access GOVERNMENT databases on temperature. He applied for funding to Heartland and they agreed to help find donors to meet his estimated budget of $88,000 to develop the web service. They have so far found a donor who provided half of that amount. The project has not been announced yet. It is typical and customary to acknowledge donations when the report (in this case probably a blog post announcing the new service) is presented.
Now one of the documents is an obvious forgery, and worth a good laugh if you want to waste time reading it. However, for the sake of argument, let us assume the budget document is legit. Guess what? Nothing is mentioned in the budget about funding WUWT or Mr. Anthony Watts. Not a cent. Period. No warts, no smoking gun. Period.
KarlL,
Fossil fuel is good. It is the Gold Standard of fuels. And there is nothing whatever wrong with accepting a private grant. The hypocrisy comes in when people like you criticize fossil fuels, and private grants, while using fossil fuels, and never criticizing grants of taxpayer money that are misused, and where there is no accounting, and where the work product is kept hidden from those who paid for it. If you think I’m labeling you a hypocrite, you would be correct.
. . .
John Billings says:
“However, if you want me to apologise for somethng that I don’t see as a wrongdoing, then the result will be that I will no longer enter posts on your website.”
Interesting. So if Billings posts here again, he is admitting that he sees himself as a wrongdoer. Or, he stops posting. Win-win for the rest of us, either way.☺
KariL wrote: “Further, if you were genuine in your claims about wanting open and honest dialog, you would be condemning Heartland’s agenda to “keep opposing voices out” and “dissuading teachers from teaching science”. But you are doing nothing but conducting a weak personal damage limitation exercise.”
You are quoting a fabricated document. Honestly, do you really think directors of Heartland sit around talking about how to “dissuade teachers from teaching SCIENCE”? Did you really fall for that? And do you think that an institute whose sole purpose is to interject “opposing voices” into the AGW debate is really going to write in their document that they want to “keep opposing voices out.”? Did you really get duped by this? Actually, it doesn’t matter. The readers of this blog can spot this. And guess what, due to the actions of this Hoaxster, there are probably new readers at this blog now. And they will weigh this for themselves. There’s no such thing as bad publicity mate, and Anthony is cocked back laughing his butt off over this.
Mr. Watts,
After reading the DeSmogBlog entries, visiting other blog sites and reading the story and comments, I’ve come to realize I would never subject myself to the sort of abuse you do, not for any cause, no matter how strongly I felt about it. I therefore feel obligated to express my appreciation for your efforts, since I regularly read and enjoy your blog. Thank you so much for your work. I have no idea why it’s worth it to you, but I’m grateful regardless.
KarlL, the sums are staggering and the goals indeed subversive. A scandal indeed compared to the mundane, innocuous funding provided by the Rockefellers to kindly find gentle people defending their views in Canada. /sarc
Have a look at how it is done when one truly wants to subvert:
http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/video/1426148700001
http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/video/search/all/billionaire-boondoggle/1428210002001
KarlL said @ February 15, 2012 at 6:34 pm
@Watts
I have evidence that the US government is funded by the fuel industry and the tobacco industry (among other). They pay taxes in case you hadn’t noticed.
You need to hone your logical skills and your reading skills. The project doesn’t exist yet! And you would presumably still be attacking Anthony if his funding source was the US government based on your own illogical criteria.
KarlL says:
February 15, 2012 at 6:34 pm
“@Watts
> “..why it is OK for the CRU..”
If you want to talk about CRU funding, start another thread. Don’t try and distract from the subject of this thread: you receiving money from the fossil industry contrary to your denial of the same.”
@L
You do realize that it’s Anthony’s blog, don’t you? BTW, what is “Fossil industry”? Furthermore, the subject of this thread is a document leak, identity theft/impersonation, a forgery and a blunder on the part of the ecolunatic brigade, not what you define.
KarlL says:
February 15, 2012 at 6:34 pm
@Watts
OK. I’ll assume from your evasion of answering straight questions that you have not read the leaked documents. I’ll help you. Those documents contain:
“We have also pledged to help raise around $90,000 in 2012 for Anthony Watts to help him create a new website to track temperature station data.”
The documents also contain evidence that shows Heartland is funded by fossil industry money (amongst others). Do you need a diagram drawn for you to understand how your claim that you do not received dirty fossil industry money is false?
—–
You know what happens when you assume don’t you? Go back and read his posting. Carefully. Now carefully go back and look at the timing of the documents. Even better, go and read Lucia’s posting for which Anthony has thoughtfully provided a link. Finally, learn what tense means. I have not accepted or received funding is not the same as I will never accept or receive funding. I know warmists have trouble with causality, but seriously?
Read Black! He can’t even get his facts straight! I wonder who is paying him? The poor english taxpayer, freezing in the dark?
i understand that it’s so bad there that seniors have resorted to burning books to keep warm. So much for CAGW!
JamesD.
friendly fire mate.
I was speaking to Anthony as a friend would to a friend. offering friendly advice.
speak plain. speak clear. speak the truth.
I dont know the facts. I would be a liar if I claimed to.
Shame on you Anthony. Shame on the rest of you deniers and baby-eaters as well. Don’t you all grasp the chaos that can occur from speech purchased on minimum wage? You should all be thrown in the Bastille for your attempt to disturb the peace on a pittance.
Over at the BBC, poor Mr. Black is getting his head handed to him on a platter. 😉
KarlL says:
February 15, 2012 at 6:34 pm
==============
I would suggest starting a blog.
Let everyone know your thoughts.
Or, one could start a blog, that appeals to human curiosity.
It’s your choice.
What great WUWT is like 390 parts per billion of truth in an atmospheric sea of swirling lies, distortions, religious idology surrounding the mythic AGW ! No wonder they all fear the power of some CO2 molecules. God speed, Anthony, well done indeed!
So they tried to manufacture their own climategate, and it only showed how honest and humble you are.
Keep up the good work Anthony!
I trust that people who appreciate the work of Anthony and others will be making more frequent and larger contributions, seeing how much value they get for their money.
@KariL
You might just want to stop and check things a moment the document you quote is the FAKE document. So this one what you want Anthony to defend himself against? Why on earth would he have to defend himself from a FAKE document?
You need to check your gullibility I think.
KarlL says:
February 15, 2012 at 6:34 pm
Are you learning impaired? Half the crap you blathered came from the faked document. Further, you twit, if the Heartland gets money from the oil industry, so what? Alarmists get money from the fossil fuel industry all the time….. http://suyts.wordpress.com/2012/02/06/idiot-nat-gas-industry-fears-monster-they-fed-may-turn-against-them/ That damn sure isn’t $44,000 or $90 or $100 thousand.
And if Heartland wanted to fund Anthony giving all of us access to data we wouldn’t otherwise have, don’t you think you owe Anthony and the Heartland some thanks instead of condemnation? Or, are you one of those who don’t believe we should have access to data?
Is the alarmist hypocrisy something inherent or do they teach classes?
Anthony:
It has been insinuated that since The Heartland received funding from fossil fuel interests, you have therefore received funding from fossil fuel interests. Ergo, you are in their pocket.
If we hold that to be true, I guess since Suzuki has received funding from Terasen Gas (formerly BC Gas), he is in the pocket of fossil fuel interests too.
Keep up the great yeoman’s work. Love your blog.
Cheers
KarlL says:
February 15, 2012 at 6:34 pm
The documents also contain evidence that shows Heartland is funded by fossil industry money (amongst others). Do you need a diagram drawn for you to understand how your claim that you do not received dirty fossil industry money is false?
Karl, in case you are unaware, most colleges provide courses in logic. I suggest you attend one soon so you avoid making these kind of silly logic errors.
Just because Heartland, which has many interests and receives money from many industries, receives money from one particular industry does not mean Watts received any of that money. You have to demonstrate Watts actually received money from that industry. You are claiming guilt by association which is meaningless.
I’m always amazed when someone displays such enormous ignorance while attacking another person. Just amazing.
Anthony: Keep up the good work. As someone else said, I’m excited that you get any funding for what I think is an important project. However, we need to beef up your fund raising skills – Michael Mann would have knocked down 500 grand for this, and he probably would have slipped the inverted Tiljander series into the works, to boot.
Know you have many who are thankful for your efforts. If your enemies consist only of this sort:
Chris Colose says:
February 15, 2012 at 11:15 am
William M. Connolley says:
February 15, 2012 at 11:14 am
You Guys are unreal says:
February 15, 2012 at 11:46 am
Exp says:
February 15, 2012 at 12:05 pm
then life is indeed a bowlful of cherries.
Best regards,
Jim F
It seems there is an effort afoot to fight fire with fire. Kinduv. You steal our memos, we steal yours. Trouble is, Heartland and WUWT memos compare to Climate gate, like a bit of rain compares to a hurricane. This will end laughably badly…For them.
Intentions of the faked document “Protocals of the Elders of the Heartland Institute”:
1. Amplify the connection with Koch. Koch appears to be only a second tier supporter, but a large portion of the document discusses them even though there are larger and more important foundations/donors they would normally discuss is a real strategy document.
2. Make it known that Dr. Wojick is a consultant for the DoE, and thus try to jeopardize his business. Dr. Wojick is evidently the key player in the nefarious plot to keep teachers from “teaching science”. Does the Obama DoE really want to award consulting work to such an evil man?
3. Smear Anthony Watts. Uses the word “coordination”, as if Watts is receiving marching orders from Heartland (who evidently according to their budget didn’t donate a penny to WUWT).
4. Keep Revkin and Curry in line. The fake document says the HI wants to cultivate relations with them.
“dirty fossil industry” … amazing how many people label an industry that way.
Then they switch on their a/c, drive their car, use their computer, get their beer cooled .. as like they don’t know where energy comes from.
EternalOptimist:
My apologies mate.
I see as of 5 minutes ago Richard Black still has libellous comments up on his online article concerning funding for Anthony’s NOAA data project, claiming that the proposed funding was for other purposes. This is despite a number of commenters posting notice of his egregious error and seeking to correct him. His article, while now updated to show Heartlands indication that the policy document was fake, remains full of allegations that are reliant on the contents of the fake document.
Anthony, If you chose to sue this mendacious individual or the corrupt organisation that offers him succour I will happily donate to a legal fund. The BBC have had plenty of time to correct Mr. Blacks damaging errors. Commenters have offered corrections. The BBC have ignored them. Right about now I figure they owe around $88000.00 in damages.
Anthony. It doesn’t matter if you received funding or not. A hypothesis is either right (For a given value) or wrong. All the money in the world cannot prove otherwise. So far you have consistently had a better batting average than the alarmists.
Keep up the good work. You’re scaring them.
Anthony:
As an old tee shirt I used to own said “Illegitimi Non Carborundum”. This ploy, along with most of the other recent actions of the warmist establish fairly reek with the stench of desperation and that very desperation may be the best indication available that even they realize that their future holds only more humiliation and eventual irrelevance. Unfortunately the damage you have already suffered may never be fully repaired and you would probably be entirely justified in taking legal action against the worst offenders against your reputation, although I don’t know that I would recommend that path. Perhaps the best you can do is take comfort from Nietzsche and Kelly Clarkson.
So, as I understand it the warmist argument is as follows: We want you to ignore the billions of dollars of public money that has been spent to promulgate the mythology of man-made global warming, and ignore the fact that physical observations have completely failed to corroborate our “settled science”, and instead focus on relatively trivial amounts of money given to support the activities of people who disagree with us. Because, you know, all we really want to do is completely restructure the economy of the world, and they dare to question this goal, plus they get money from non-government sources so they must be tainted. Because, you know, government funding is both pure and infallible.
Peter says:
“Heartland’s mission is to influence public opinion and public policy. Go to their website, open their “Prospectus” and read it. All they talk about is media strategy, influencing key opinion makers, calls to legislators, writing newsletters for public officials, shaping regulation, etc. etc. You’re absolutely right, they are a 501(c)(3) funded by private individuals and corporations. And they make it very clear for those donors that their money is going to buy influence in government and public policy. Heartland is a perfectly legal non-profit political lobbying organization.
You may think the IPCC has many flaws, but I hope you recognize that its mission is to deliver unbiased information and not to advance a particular agenda.”
=================================
I have no confidence in that claim because many IPCC scientists are funded by NGO’s and non-profits. Some are lead authors and in high profile positions. Why do you think funding from one group with an agenda creates biased science yet funding from another group with another agenda creates neutral science?
In a perfect world I would not like to see any interest group fund any scientist, but we are in the real world here.
http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2011/10/04/wwf-influence-at-the-highest-levels-of-the-ipcc/
Heartland has a budget. Heartland has a budget. Heartland has a budget!!!
OMG, therefore, the global warming theory is true and anything put out by those associated with Heartland are not being truthful.
Sorry, you have to be a gullible no-mind to believe that, especially when $6.5 million is only about 0.5% of the funding provided directly for espousing the pro-AGW side.
Sorry for the insult, but maybe some people are just gullible …
As others have said – a hearty congratulations Anthony for today’s most excellent announcements. It is quite an accomplishment – and a highly positive one at that.
They have done the one truly important thing correctly, they are spelling your and the site’s name right … and in doing so exposing the good work – and service – you perform in educating people regarding the climate.
At the same time they expose the abject hypocrisy of the AGW cabal – the orders of magnitude difference in the funding received by the skeptical side compared to the AGW proponents.
Do not apologize for being granted funding for a worthy project. Most of all do NOT let the mental midgets here attacking, while ignoring the reality of the funding and practices for the AGW proponents, get to you.
I believe this is a great day for skeptical science and for WUWT and yourself. Targeting and attacking you shows you have become a real threat. And in the process they have exposed their own failings.
If the climate skeptics can do the science that allows them to become this much of a threat to the AGW cabal, on this minuscule level of funding, it is one more nail in the coffin of AGW.
The US government alone has funded more than $1.3 billion to the AGW research – yet it is the good folks like you, large;y self-funded, and supplemented by small amounts from groups like Heartland and their $6 Million dollar budgets that are gaining acceptance with the public.
Its no wonder they are targeting and attacking. And doing it very badly, and laughably I might add.
Here’s to the Keystone Cops of the AGW brigade – aiming for skeptics and blowing off their own extremities instead … yeah they got you good, but its only a flesh wound – no real damage – while they expose themselves to ridicule in the process.
You know, I don’t care who funds good science as long as the results are transparent and able to be replicated and tested. I wouldn’t even mind the stuff that is done by the various academics as long as all the data and methods were available to test and confirm or deny. Some of the best geology has been done in an attempt to get at some resource buried deep in the ground – a pure profit motive for sure. The drug and chemical testing is a mixed bag though, some really good stuff has been done, and some real hokum. It all depends on how things are pursued on a scientific basis. If people followed the protocols, the hokum would have never survived, but people worked on reputation and let it through. The result was a couple of spectacular corporate failures created from real people getting hurt. I see climate science as being in this area, but unfortunately the ones who will be injured may never know what it was that caused their short brutal lives where their grandparents had lived in luxury. This is the crime of bad science, someone always gets hurt.
As for the sentence on the science instruction, what passes for science in most US schools today is pure propaganda of the chicken-little sky is boiling variety. Many teachers have become social activists who teach their charges WHAT to think rather than HOW TO REASON. Our students would be better off getting NO science instruction than what they are getting at many schools now, but even better would be to inject the scientific method into EVERY SCIENCE LECTURE or LAB. Unfortunately we would have to first teach the activists (whoops meant teachers – or did I?) that quaint idea first.
R. Gates says:
February 15, 2012 at 5:13 pm
So Tallbloke is guilty until proven innocent, R.? Simply because he was subject to an investigation?
That’s the level of intelligence you apply to the Global Warming movement–Humans are guilty of causing it by their CO2 emissions–just ignore the correlation/causation problem!
Problem is, you’re wrong, R.
Get it?
Karl, when you advise us that you’ve pulled the mains breaker on your house and cut off all electricity permanently, pulled the modern plumbing out of the walls, thrown out every item in your home that contains petroleum derivatives including the computer you typed your nonsense on, gave away your automobile, thrown away most of your clothing, stop heating your home, and demanded that your local hospital, police department, and airport do the same then I’ll find you credible enough to lecture us about dirty fossil industry.
Until then, your feigned indignation is nothing short of pure hypocrisy.
Dave Wendt says:
February 15, 2012 at 7:40 pm
Anthony:
…………”.Unfortunately the damage you have already suffered may never be fully repaired and you would probably be entirely justified in taking legal action against the worst offenders against your reputation,”……….
=============================
With all due respect, it killed them, not Anthony.
They may never recover from this blunder, will the troops follow their leaders anymore, when the objective is a lie.
William M. Connolley says:
February 15, 2012 at 3:18 pm
I’ve been trying to stay out of this thread, I’ve only edited a couple pages at Wikipedia myself. However, I can’t resist this one. I noticed one of your “special contributions” regards the Heartland Institute and several reverted edits. Looks like I’ll stick to WUWT and ignore Wikipedia for my climate information for a while longer. I didn’t bother to check them out, but please keep up the great work.
To others – “Special:Contributions” does not list “special contributions” It seems to list all the contributions, reversions, and deletions.
The old “ignore you, mock you, attack you” meme is in the final third. Be careful Mr. Watts. I am seriously concerned for your safety. They are getting desperate. If this is the best they can do then pathetic is an understatement but be careful. You’ve done a wonderful service to science in general and climatology in particular. My hopes are with you but remember Galileo . Cheers.
For whatever it may be worth, I emailed the following to the author of the story in The Register: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/02/15/heartland_docs_leaked/
If anyone else also wishes to email that author after reading his story, just click on his name on the story page, and it takes you to an online email form (no registration or anything required)
Dear Mr. Chirgwin,
I love the Register, but have to say I was sorely disappointed today. I just finished reading your article: Heartland Institute documents leaked. As a result, I must say “for shame Mr. Chirgwin!!” I very much hope that you have the integrity to update your article once you check and verify some of what I mention and include below.
To begin, I ask if you bothered to check and see if the supposed “Heartland” documents are legitimate, or at the very least, state clearly in your article that the authenticity is unknown at the time you went to press? No. It now appears that the planning/strategy document, which you quoted from, is a fake.
Did you contact Anthony Watts to verify that portion of your story? No, you didn’t. Nor did you accurately report what the funding is for, what the actual source of the funding is (hint, not Heartland), or even the amount of funding. First and easiest, Mr. Watts has not received $90K. He has gotten a funding commitment of $44K from a donor Heartland put him in contact with – this is materially different both in terms of the source and the amount. Finally, the funding has nothing to do with ‘relaunching’ his website (either of them – Wattsupwiththat or Surfacestation.org). The funding is for Mr. Watts to develop a website that makes difficult to find raw data from the USA’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) more user friendly – e.g., easy to find, and able to seen in a graphic format rather than simply raw data tables. This is something NOAA ought to be doing themselves already – Mr. Watts will do it using private funding, far cheaper than it would cost the US taxpayer if NOAA had it done, and the page will be free for public use.
Please, Mr. Chirgwin, correct your article – restore the integrity of The Register.
Kind regards,
p.s., I hope the following will help get you started in your article update research, from: wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/15/some-notes-on-the-heartland-leak
I don’t get it. Is “Heartland” a secret code word for “eeeeevil oil company”??? If EVERYTHING alleged were true, what would be the problem?
Larger picture, who gets to decide what is “clean” funding for climate research and what is “dirty” funding?
Oh. Oh! I just searched the list of companies in the S & P 500. Using “energy” as the search term I got 72 hits. There are some well known fossil fuel companies therein. Some of them pay dividends. To me. Yikes! How embarrassing.
“With all due respect, it killed them, not Anthony.”
Indeed. This must be the least scandalous ‘scandal’ I’ve ever seen… clearly global climate warming disruption is on its last legs if this is the best they can do.
And if the document they’ve been spreading across the web is fake, I’d guess there will be a few brown trousers in the climate alarmist camp tonight.
@William Howard M. Connolley
We have never met but from your posts here and your works at Wikipedia it seems you are a pretty credulous fellow. Perhaps you should be slightly more skeptical of screaming headlines and just about anything published in The Guardian about the climate.
If you have not noticed yet, the jig is up. CO2-caused CAGW is bunk. The money is all going to go away.
@John Hulquist: If we are doing confessions, many of my mutual funds are invested in coal, oil and gas as well, so I guess I too am being “paid off” by evil carbon. Come to think of it, there are VERY FEW mutual funds that don’t have a traditional energy component. They tend to turn a consistent profit, which is what I invest for!
Lots of people are reading this thread, many of whom will be here for the first time, not knowing who to trust. I submit for their consideration this observation: look at the freedom with which Anthony’s opponents get their material posted on this web site, some of it, IMHO, crossing the line into defamation. Now go to any alarmist blog you please and try to get a similar attack posted about the owner of that blog. Fact: this is where the free speech is, that should tell you something.
At 1:27 PM on 15 February, peeke squirms and whines:
Oh, goodie. The exchange of point and counterpoint in comments within this forum is – somehow – not supposed to be “argument.” Got any support for that contention, bubbie? Something from the Tooth Fairy or the Easter Bunny or some other source you’re yanking out of Fantasyland?
The perpetration of argumentum ad hominem is observed whenever and wherever anyone evades address of the substance of a statement by condemning the source (in this instance a newspaper clearly stipulating the sources they’d drawn upon).
Beyond that your noise about “Checking the credentials of a certain person at the door” is particularly damnable.
Y’see, kiddo, that’s precisely what happened when the obstetrical establishment in 19th Century Vienna dismissed the observations and warnings of Semmelweis for no better reason than that his “credentials…at the door” kept him from being considered “a reliable scientific source.”
This despite the fact that he’d provided empirical proof of his contentions by implementing methods of simple cleanliness that reduced rates of mortality attributable to puerperal fever from 12.24% to 2.38% in the clinic under his management.
Try to peddle your “Checking the credentials…at the door” business on somebody other than a physician, fella. We get taught about the Semmelweis reflex – and all those young women dying of puerperal sepsis – in our first-year History of Medicine courses.
It’s an identified subset of confirmation bias.
Keep right on shoveling, peeke. Just make damned sure that your manure doesn’t wind up on other people’s shoes.
Chris Colose says:
February 15, 2012 at 10:36 am
“anti-climate propaganda”
Does anybody know what this means? Is this a rational, literate person talking? We can infer what this means only because we happen know Colose is an ardent alarmist.
“even in to the K-12 classroom”
Amazing, I happen to agree with Colose on this. The Heartland should not be developing climate change programming for grade and high school students. By the same token, no climate science programming of any form should be directed at grade school or high school students since the science is too premature and the objective is indoctrination, not learning. Leave the children out of this battle! Teach them the science basics in order that they have some ability to weigh scientific arguments when they are adults.
Reading the warmist visitor posts hoping to score some points has been very amusing. These guys are dreaming in technicolor if they think Heartlandgate is even remotely comparable to Climategates 1 & 2. And remember team fans, FOIA’s encrypted file still hangs like the sword of Damocles over their beloved and admired team.
Much ado about nothing. This non-news story is designed to discredit climate skepticism. Its a great measure of how desperate the proponents of AGW have become. It won’t detract from the fact that the the whole theory of anthropogenic global warming is crumbling before our very eyes.
Framl says:
February 15, 2012 at 1:52 pm
Next time, consider asking your readers first for funding and perhaps assistance with programming. If you think your reader’s generosity is smaller than the financial needs of your ambitions, perhaps ask Heartland fund any shortfall.
Framl…I agree 100%,as soon as the cAGW crowd starts asking their supporters to fund them, WITHOUT taxpayer bucks!
Anthony…keep up the great work. Remember what W.Churchill said….You have enemies? GOOD. That means you have done something right.
Compared to the CRU FOIA political fiasco this is open book on a library shelf.
John Hultquist:
There are some well known fossil fuel companies therein. Some of them pay dividends. To me.
You too? California teachers retirement system has $1.2 billion worth of Exxon-Mobile stock which helps pay my retirement:
http://www.calstrs.com/Investments/portfolio/usStock.asp#E
EXXON MOBIL CORP 15,195,323 1,236,595
Funny though, I’m not embarrassed. Just keep sending me the check. (But for those who may not know it, the CA retirement system is rigged so that if the STRS portfolio can’t cover the system liabilities, the California taxpayer has to make up the deficiency. You want to hope that Exxon makes a profit.)
Load of smoke, ignore it.
Every operation needs cash to run, yet you, and you alone, are allowed ONLY be able to operate out of love, altruism and pure motives?
From the Heartland website…
Apologies: The Heartland Institute apologizes to the donors whose identities were revealed by this theft. We promise anonymity to many of our donors, and we realize that the major reason these documents were stolen and faked was to make it more difficult for donors to support our work. We also apologize to Heartland staff, directors, and our allies in the fight to bring sound science to the global warming debate, who have had their privacy violated and their integrity impugned.
“the fight to bring sound science to the global warming debate”
Who at Heartland is the arbiter of what passes as “sound science”??
Can’t resist one more thought:
“Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.”
Napoleon Bonaparte
Keep up the good work Anthony, and remember, the truth will out…
Watts paid to do work that NOAA should have done but doesn’t as a useless Federal pretend bucreacracy.
juanslayton says:
February 15, 2012 at 8:46 pm
“the CA retirement system is rigged so that if the STRS portfolio can’t cover the system liabilities, the California taxpayer has to make up the deficiency”
Remind me, again, why I once thought of moving to CA? [Actually, WA State has looming problems – too many of us old folks and it is a growing cohort.]
Owen in Ga says:
February 15, 2012 at 8:26 pm
“VERY FEW mutual funds that don’t have a traditional energy component.”
Do you mean like the Vanguard Energy Fund? Yeah, we do that too.
This is very interesting. I suggest the folks here read the document mentioned.
Heartland alleges that one of the documents (the Climate Strategy) is a fake.
The DeSmogBlog has reviewed that Strategy document and compared its content to other material they have in hand. It addresses five elements:
The Increased Climate Project Fundraising material is reproduced in and confirmed by Heartland’s own budget.
The “Global Warming Curriculum for K-12 Classrooms” is also a Heartland budget item and has been confirmed independently by the author, Dr. David Wojick.
The Funding for Parallel Organizations; Funding for Selected Individuals Outside Heartland are both reproduced and confirmed in the Heartland budget. And Anthony Watts has confirmed independently the payments in Expanded Climate Communications.
All this is in the alleged faked document. It seems that Heartland needs to come clean and admit that the alleged faked doco is actually not faked at all.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevezwick/2012/02/15/the-real-climategate-desmog-blog-outs-heartland-propaganda-machine/
Anthony: like Richards, above, this should clear everything up to the satisfaction of all.
I have a very small interest ( 0.000125 ) in overriding royalties, in the Elk basin Unit, Montana and Wyoming.. I have therefore donated no money whatsoever to WUWT for fear of the consequences if the news of Big Oil secondary contributions were ever leaked (or stolen). Ditto for Climate Audit, Bishop Hill, and the rest. Nothing. Nada. Not a cent.
There. Is everybody happy now ?
Continue your good work with a clear conscience, Anthony . Don’t waist your time on the idiots !
Who cares? The folks at Heartland, or at any other private organization, can decide for themselves “what passes as ‘sound science'” or sound anything-at-all, for that matter. They can give grants to whomever they want. Why is it of any concern to you? You don’t have to agree with them, and you don’t have to agree with the grantees.
It’s different when my taxpayer dollars go to pay for the wild-eyed speculation and radical machinations of a James Hansen. Who the hell decides that he is doing ‘sound science’? As far as I can tell he is a crackpot of the first order.
So if a tiny organization like Heartland can pay for a conference or a website or a pamphlet that will help shed a glimmer of light on the dark corners of the massive, decaying edifice of ideologically-driven State Science, more power to them.
/Mr Lynn
@Martin: They can’t do any worse at the concept of science than the CAGW team, and like most think-tank type operations, they go find someone with enough knowledge to judge the order of magnitude of the problem and pay them to dig into it further. That is the nature of honest advocacy (note I haven’t looked at enough of their work to see whether they significantly slant the story on scientific issues – can’t really judge on the CAGW issue because the advocates of CAGW have so skewed the arguments that a reasonably skeptical attitude looks extreme by its distance from the orthodoxy of CLIMSCI.)
RockyRoad says:
February 15, 2012 at 7:56 pm
R. Gates says:
February 15, 2012 at 5:13 pm
…
Theft is theft…get it?
The UK police would not have raided Tallbloke, if there had there been no crime they were investigating, get it?
So Tallbloke is guilty until proven innocent, R.? Simply because he was subject to an investigation?
—–
Shake off your mind and read what was written. No where did I say he was guilty of anything. My point was that they considered the theft of the Climategate files to be a crime. You really should read what is written rather than what you expect to be reading.
What a storm in a teacup. Really this is pettifoggery by those who have been funded for years by grants from oil, coal, gas, and nuclear industries. Worse still they have taken funds from the US Taxpayer which could otherwise have been spent on vital National infrastructure, like railways, roads and bridges, schools and hospitals, and yes Genuine Empirical Research.
Can it be “green” to take moneys from the US Taxpayer for instance, and spend them on hokum “research”, and bogus “energy schemes” , when this actually adds to the costs of business, and consequently causes vast reductions in the numbers of persons employed. This is the “green jobs paradox”, so ably described (appropriately enough) by Professor Gabriel Calzada, at the “Heartland Conferences on Climate Change 2009”, in his lecture entitled, “Boom and Bust of the Spanish Renewable Miracle”.
An embedded version of this 20 minute lecture can be seen here:
http://fraudulentclimate.atspace.com/videopage7.html#calzada09
See some other selected Heartland Videos on that page.
The SOUND LEVEL on those Conference Videos is VERY LOW,
so you will need to turn up your volume control when playing.
REMEMBER TO TURN IT DOWN AGAIN AFTERWARDS
I hope I read about this on Drudge…
Matthew… are you there?
Anthony, I agree with Jack Mackenzie (says:)
February 15, 2012 at 10:53 am
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. ”
Mahatma Gandhi name meaning “Great Soul”… as are you.
Stay the course.
The CAGW fraud industry are scared, frightened and very desperate. This last ditch smear attack was coming, we all knew it was coming and quite frankly Its a wonder it has taken the CAGW cult to fabricate this one. The CAGW cult fraudsters dont even realise how sad and pathetic they appear, have lost the basic ability of self examination. How long did it take the CAGW fraudsters to fabricate this attack? A coordinated offensive months in the planning that was hoped to smear sceptics is fast turning on the perpetrators, its a gas attack across the lines and those who turned on the taps forgot to see which way the wind was blowing!
I would like to offer my heartfelt thanks to WUWT and Heartlands for their hard work bringing the truth to a larger and larger audience, you will receive no Nobel prizes, no medals or awards from the bought and paid for establishment. The only reward is the hard struggle to tell the truth, no red carpet treatment by the fawning poodles of the entertainment ‘industry’, no politicians lining up for photo ops.
The CAGW fraudsters last great offensive of the war, it has failed almost before it began of course, and of course only the CAGW cults client stooges in the MSM will cover it. Whatever they have to say is no longer being heard as it was even two years ago, in a glorious turn of fortunes the CAGW cult has turned up a day late and a dollar short and its utterly hilarious to us sceptics, the spectacle of this last major offensive spluttering to a halt even as it begins is deeply deeply satisfying.
Those behind the CAGW fraud must be stupid to the point of retarded to think that this kind of coordinated attack would actually work, must be so desperate to believe that their stooge MSM could spread it wide and deep enough to have any effect at all, they simply do not have the power and authority or reach they once did, its game over for them really and this proves it. So sit back and enjoy the spectacle of the CAGW fraudsters making fools of themselves, we earned it folks, and I suppose in lieu of any other reward this will do nicely, very nicely indeed.
Martin says:
February 15, 2012 at 9:15 pm
“All this is in the alleged faked document. It seems that Heartland needs to come clean and admit that the alleged faked doco is actually not faked at all.”
So the fact that the fakers mixed true information they retrieved in with the fake stuff means the fake stuff is true? You have no critical thinking skills at all, do you?
I hope the National Post is paying attention to this.
Warmists attempt these tactics at their own peril: the good folks here swiftly demolish pretension and get to the heart of the ridiculous contradictions of both the ‘science’ espoused by the warmists and now their espionage and slander of WUWT. They’re so convinced of their moral rectitude that they never question whether the ends justify the means, even if the means turn out to be breathtakingly stupid.
Keep up the good work, Anthony and all you defenders of science, logic, reason and WUWT!
Martin says:
February 15, 2012 at 9:15 pm
“This is very interesting. I suggest the folks here read the document mentioned.
Heartland alleges that one of the documents (the Climate Strategy) is a fake.
The DeSmogBlog has reviewed that Strategy document and compared its content to other material they have in hand. It addresses five elements:
[…]
All this is in the alleged faked document. It seems that Heartland needs to come clean and admit that the alleged faked doco is actually not faked at all”
The obvious conclusion is that the forger had access to the “other material” that DeSmogBlog have in hand when making the forgery. “Stop teachers from teaching science”? The forger must believe the “Republican War On Science” rethoric by Mooney.
Wait. Did I say Mooney? Isn’t he a regular DeSmogBlog contributor?
Yes Martin, that is indeed very interesting.
R. Gates says:
February 15, 2012 at 9:26 pm
Shake off your mind and read what was written. No where did I say he was guilty of anything. My point was that they considered the theft of the Climategate files to be a crime. You really should read what is written rather than what you expect to be reading”
Perfectly OK to assume an outside denier rather than member of the CRU of East Anglia University was suspect, R. gates. You really shouldn’t read what is written in newspapers.
Please don’t answer my comment.
Thanks for everthing you do Anthony. Your patience with the lazy, incompetent and malicious is worthy of respect.
Martin,
A forged document wouldn’t have much value if it didn’t include some of the genuine information in the other documents. In fact, it’s a pretty sloppy job as it is, which suggests it was done hurriedly to meet a publishing deadline. (The first time I read it, it read like a CAGW activist’s wet dream of what Heartland would say.) Desmogblog is now defending its use of the forged “strategy” document by claiming that the topics it addresses are also raised in the other (apparently genuine) documents, ignoring the outrageously false specifics.
But in an action for defamation, it is the falseness of the particular statement, not the general subject matter, that is at issue. I certainly hope someone files some kind of civil action so discovery can be conducted on the publishers of this faked document, to determine where it originated.
What did the authors of the desmogblog and skepticalscience articles know, and when did they know it?
They aren’t journalists. They are a cheerleading squad for Barack Obama. This is what happens when people vote Left.
@Tucci78
“The exchange of point and counterpoint in comments within this forum is – somehow – not supposed to be “argument.”
No. But if you disagree, and that bothers you nee to look no further than the mirror:
“Got any support for that contention, bubbie? Something from the Tooth Fairy or the Easter Bunny or some other source you’re yanking out of Fantasyland?”
“Keep right on shoveling, peeke. Just make damned sure that your manure doesn’t wind up on other people’s shoes.”
‘t Is exactly this kind of frothing at the mouth that makes me skeptical of skeptics as well. And if that is a fallacy, so be it.
Heartland has stated the “Strategy” document was forged. It is this document that contains the prejudicial comments – including the part about discouraging teachers from teaching science:
This document as has been noted was a scan, created Monday of this week, by an Epson scanner. Scanning the document strips all traces of originating information from document properties. Reading the document shows it is largely comprised of data compiled from other documents.
What is also revealed however, is that the writing style, both what and how it is phrased, and key punctuation, is different.
Below is the section on the Climate Education initiative from the detailed 29 page “Fundraising Plan” document. That PDF has NOT been stripped of document properties, and shows it was created by Joseph Bast on 1/16/2012 at 10am.
This commentary greatly expands on the alleged “Strategy” document, and the description of the education program shows they have engaged a professional, well connected and credentialed individual, to create a teaching program that meets the requirements and explores both sides – noting these items are controversial. There is nothing remotely similar to or whatsoever related to the alleged comment that the goal was to dissuade teachers from teaching this topic.
Several other notes …
First, the alleged “Strategy” doc author states “the topic of climate change is controversial and uncertain”. However, a read of the lengthier and more detailed education comments in the “Fundraising” document shows no mention of the term “uncertain” – only the word “controversial” was used … its use is an inflammatory embellishment.
Second, I would note the author in the alleged “Strategy” document makes the comment about dissuading teachers from teaching after use of a dash. Here too the comment is an inflammatory embellishment, with no similar mention made in the longer and more detailed education section in the validated “Fundraising” document.
Third – the author in the “Fundraising” document in all of its 29 pages – used the “dash” in a sentence a total of 3 times. Each of these times he used them in a pair – as I did in prior and this sentence – in place of comma’s. The “Strategy” author used dashes a like 3 times – but in just two pages. And each time as a single dash, used in place of a semi-colon – to add a modifier or extension to the sentence.
Last – no other document in the group at desmog contains wording remotely similar to the inflammatory statements in the alleged “Strategy” document.
For example: the “Fundraising”, “Binder1” and “Budget” PDF files are all validated as created by J. Bast. The writing style is similar in each and every one. Straightforward – free of inflammatory embellishments – exactly as one would expect from a professional organization. The “Strategy” document on the other hand has several inflammatory embellishments – both uncharacteristic of the writings of J. Bast – and not found in any of the other documents.
Draw your own conclusions.
It is sad that these people have so much hatred that they would attack Heartland, and those associated, in the first place – especially when it exposes their hypocrisy – exposes the huge, orders of magnitude, difference in funding for the AGW brigade vs the skeptical science side.
Worse though, that they would be so desperate they would forge a document to make it seem worse.
Having read desmog blog on occasion, and knowing that one of the worst of them all – a man with few scruples – David Suzuki – is behind them …. guess it should be no surprise.
I’m getting the sense that the battles are intensifying in the broader war to defend truth. Here in the Bay Area the battles are raging over the One Bay Area Plan; something that came out of AB32 and SB375 to force the reduction of greenhouse gases emissions and mitigation of large sea level rise in the state (California). Critics of the premise and the planning process have caused the planners to change their language and even produce training programs to counter the critics.
The alarmist are seeming a bit more desperate these days as their arguments continue to fall apart. But I’m expecting the rancor to escalate dramatically in the next months.
Seen in an email on a mailing list I am on:
What a naive fellow he is. NOT!
Magoo says:
February 15, 2012 at 2:32 pm
Anthony, keep the receipts and accounts for the job at hand and publish them on Watts Up With That at the end of the year when the job is complete. This will account for all the cash and show that you personally didn’t profit in any way – all cash was spent on research. Return any unspent money to the Heartland Institute. This will show that you did it purely in the name of science for all, both pro & anti AGW, and in no way was it for personal profit.
===============
Magoo, please stop. Not only is this chump change, Anthony deserves monetairy compensation for his time. I am not saying he is taking any in this project. I am saying it is fine if there was some. Private funds to a private citizen to make public records easier to understand. One articulate historic barb would call this “Much ado about nothing”
From the “Budget” PDF posted at deSmog. Makes one say hmmmmmmm …..?
Ron House says:
February 15, 2012 at 8:30 pm
Lots of people are reading this thread, many of whom will be here for the first time, not knowing who to trust. I submit for their consideration this observation: look at the freedom with which Anthony’s opponents get their material posted on this web site, some of it, IMHO, crossing the line into defamation. Now go to any alarmist blog you please and try to get a similar attack posted about the owner of that blog. Fact: this is where the free speech is, that should tell you something.
===========
I agree completely. I wish your post could have been the first comment on this thread.
Martin says:
This is very interesting. I suggest the folks here read the document mentioned.
When are you gonna?
Heartland alleges that one of the documents (the Climate Strategy) is a fake.
And it most likely is. The faked part are not necessarily the facts drawn from the other stolen documents. It would be stupid to fake those, as there is nothing the least bit untoward about those facts. The likley fake part is the language that they are wrapped in – persuading teachers to not teach science and such nonsense.
Heartland’s assertion that this document is faked is supported by some curious facts:
1. Unlike all of the other documents alleged to have been written by HI, the “Climate Strategy” is a PDF of a scanned page.
2. Unlike all of the other documents alleged to have been written by HI, the “Climate Strategy” PDF has no authorship metadata.
3. The language used to describe the items is more in line with how alarmists see HI, than how HI would describe itself.
4. Unlike all of the other documents alleged to have been written by HI, the “Climate Strategy” is not on the agenda for the meeting with which these documents were associated.
HI also claims that there are factual errors in the document …
reap what you sow – there is (a degree of) justice… after all!
NYT has long article up; the forgery is mentioned only in one sentence, and in a way that casts doubt not on the intentions of the perpetrators, but on Heartland’s statement.
“Heartland did declare one two-page document to be a forgery, although its tone and content closely matched that of other documents that the group did not dispute.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/16/science/earth/in-heartland-institute-leak-a-plan-to-discredit-climate-teaching.html
“How did this happen? The stolen documents were obtained by an unknown person who fraudulently assumed the identity of a Heartland board member and persuaded a staff member here to “re-send” board materials to a new email address. Identity theft and computer fraud are criminal offenses subject to imprisonment. We intend to find this person and see him or her put in prison for these crimes.”
This describes, in a nutshell the tactics currently being investigated and prosecuted in the UK. Many journalists at News Corporation newspapers used this tactic to steal documents, although there is no evidence they ever faked or rewrote them. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/9085073/The-Sun-arrests-police-focused-on-long-term-criminality.html
And it’s the same Suzanne Goldberg who has been trying to get toilet paper banned for years. Just go through the history of her articles to see the kind of looney hate, conspiracy theories, bias, and hysteria she has tried to generate in society over the years.
R. Gates says:
February 15, 2012 at 9:26 pm
Theft is theft…get it?
The UK police would not have raided Tallbloke, if there had there been no crime they were investigating, get it?
So Tallbloke is guilty until proven innocent, R.? Simply because he was subject to an investigation?
—–
“Shake off your mind and read what was written. No where did I say he was guilty of anything. My point was that they considered the theft of the Climategate files to be a crime. You really should read what is written rather than what you expect to be reading.”
You should really get your head out of your you know what. Tallbloke has nothing to do with this, nor have you shown that the Heartland Institute regarded the release of CRU files to be an acceptable practice or any relevance of Climategate to this incident or to Heartland. And “theft is theft” makes no more sense than to say that all dogs are white. But it appears you would be a strong advocate for the FBI raiding their offices and homes, for at least the crime of releasing personal information from a private organization.
Dang! Have to run to the store for more popcorn.
From a poster at BBC Black’s site
“FakeGate” It has a really nice ring to it eh !
The Heartland crime reminds me of RatherGate, when Dan Rather wanted to believe a fake document so badly that he didn’t do proper confirmation. The rest was history. Rather lost his job, and his dishonorable reporting will follow him like a bad dream for the rest of his life.
Likewise with the Heartland situation. Whoever stole the documents runs the risk of a prison sentence, and probably has to provide for a family and a mortgage. Heartland really doesn’t lose much over this, but the perpetrator risks all. Stupid.
R. Gates says:
February 15, 2012 at 9:26 pm
RockyRoad says:
February 15, 2012 at 7:56 pm
R. Gates says:
February 15, 2012 at 5:13 pm
…
Theft is theft…get it?
The UK police would not have raided Tallbloke, if there had there been no crime they were investigating, get it?
So Tallbloke is guilty until proven innocent, R.? Simply because he was subject to an investigation?
—–
Shake off your mind and read what was written. No where did I say he was guilty of anything. My point was that they considered the theft of the Climategate files to be a crime. You really should read what is written rather than what you expect to be reading.
============
R Gates,wow? you are a being a little thick here. ” they considered the theft of the Climategate files to be a crime”. Neither you or they (the police) know a crime was committed, as it could have been the work of an internal whilste blower of PUBLICALY FUNDED MATTERS, subject to FOIA, wheras this was a theft of private information (revealing nothing nefarious) not subject to any FOI, and apparently, finding nothing evil in the real documents, further tainted with fraud. Admit it R Gates, the two situations are not analogus.
Martin says:
February 15, 2012 at 9:15 pm
“The DeSmogBlog has reviewed that Strategy document and compared its content to other material they have in hand. It addresses five elements:
The Increased Climate Project Fundraising material is reproduced in and confirmed by Heartland’s own budget.
The “Global Warming Curriculum for K-12 Classrooms” is also a Heartland budget item and has been confirmed independently by the author, Dr. David Wojick.
The Funding for Parallel Organizations; Funding for Selected Individuals Outside Heartland are both reproduced and confirmed in the Heartland budget. And Anthony Watts has confirmed independently the payments in Expanded Climate Communications.
All this is in the alleged faked document. It seems that Heartland needs to come clean and admit that the alleged faked doco is actually not faked at all.”
—————————————————————————-
Ex Post Facto, my friend. The Strategy Document was created a month after the material it’s based on. Try again.
Wow. Its 11pm and I have just finally finished reading all the posts in this thread, and…wow. There are a lot of very uninformed people wandering around this planet tonight, and it seems like they’ve all been drawn to the light like so many suicidal moths. I’m almost embarrassed for them. Almost.
Two things that I expect will happen as a result of this little imbroglio: Anthony’s tip jar will be ringing merrily for the next little while.
And so will the Heritage Institute’s.
Win.
A reasoned response from Judith Curry:
http://judithcurry.com/2012/02/15/heartland/
And a comment on that post directly from David Wojick:
Martin,
The faked document is a phony. If all of the information is available in the other Heartland documents, then wouldn’t the forger also have that information when authoring this fraud? The project by Dr. Wojick is also discussed in detail in other documents, so I am not surprised he confirmed it. No one is denying that Heartland is funding the production of source materials for teachers to present a balanced view on the AGW theory, for example, presenting how using upside-down Tiljander gives you a hockeystick. No one is denying that Watts requested help from Heartland in lining up a donor to fund the development of a web service to provide GOVERNMENT temperature data, for free, in graphical form to the public. No one is denying that Heartland received 3% of its funding from Koch, a reputable firm that provides high paying jobs to thousands. No one is denying this. What is being pointed out is that the document uses facts to inject a false story. For example, that Heartland “coordinates” with Anthony Watts. Or that Heartland directors sit around discussing how to prevent teachers from “teaching science” or how to “work” the climate story. These are bogus claims and Heartland has said that this unique scanned copy is a fraud. Why would the criminal print this one document (they were received by email), then scan it? Maybe to remove embedded data tracking edits? Perhaps? The other documents, which contain nothing scandalous, are all presented in original electronic form, but this one document, presenting Heartland as a bunch of Neanderthals, is scanned. And Heartland states it is a fraud. They are telling the truth as every reader of this comment section will know.
re post by Ken Hall says: February 15, 2012 at 1:08 pm, and others who’ve made similar comments:
I can’t help but find the irony in the fact that just yesterday Obama, when asked by a journalist how he has lived up to the ‘change’ in his 2008 “hope and change” slogan, bragged that he has made government websites easier for people to use, but other things have been harder to accomplish because the world was worse than he knew when he took office (while loudly proclaiming, at the time, that he knew just how bad things were while his opponent did not)… I guess the word never got to the NASA temperature folks.
Obama On Change: I’ve Made It Easier To Navigate Government Websites
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/02/14/obama_on_change_ive_made_it_easier_to_navigate_government_websites_.html
Richard Black reeks of fear and desperation. He and those like him must seize upon this and blow it out of proportion because it’s all they’ve got – they don’t have truth and honesty on their side.
Anthony is effective so they are afraid of Anthony – and it shows.
So this site is not paid for by Al Gore ?
Anyway, I would suggest this … Let the story run and run. it will bring visitors here where they can read for themselves what is happening in the real world.
Put a notice on the temperature station site re it’s funding.
Then you will be completely open and honest, then ask RC, SkS, et al to do the same.
And another comment directly from David Wojick:
Let see. 502 post till this. Obviously there is some level of excitement. Nothing has changed.
re post by: DirkH says: February 15, 2012 at 1:52 pm
Or perhaps he’s referring to how well Al Gore’s “The Inconvenient Truth” held up in court in the EU (hint, Gore lost and now if the film is shown in school, they must in effect warn first that it’s propaganda, not accurate science). Wish that were the case here in the USA also.
Frankly, I hope Heartland or someone actually is preparing some decent K-12 modules that present the climate issue accurately and counter the blatant propaganda that’s being taught — and actually manage to get that information into our schools.
on a tanget or slightly off topic — BEST has been mentioned again in the comments, but just what is the current status with the BEST research papers? Have any of them actually made it thru peer review and been published? Hasn’t it been almost a year now since the media blitz about it? (thanks in advance for info)
John Billings says:
February 15, 2012 at 2:05 pm
If there is any fault here, and I am not sure there is, it is that Anthony should have flagged money he has received. It is hard to square the persistent flagging of warmists’ funding while keeping quiet about your own. It smacks of double standards.
;———————————————————————————————————————
You have a lot in common with insects.
They never see it coming and they always end up with their ass where their head should be.
Actually, I paraphrased the Daily Bayonet.
It appears to me the 20 ppm of anthropogenic CO2 has cooked your noodle.
So..nah, nah, nah, nah.
The stuff the HI says is nothing compared to some of the Alramist websites.
e.g.
http://grist.org/climate-change/cohort-replacement-climate-deniers-wont-change-but-they-will-die/
”It will take time for younger, more climate-enlightened folks to assume positions of influence and power. Anything that accelerates that process (like, say, abolishing the U.S. Senate) is to the good. It will be a subtle process, largely under the radar … until it isn’t. And things change. Quickly.
So forget arguing, arguing, arguing with a tribe unmoored from reality. Start organizing, organizing, organizing the cohorts that are amenable to reality. Prepare them for when it’s their turn to take over. Time will do the rest.
”
Are they are touching on indoctrination of children ?
WOW! Here’s one hell of an accusation! On Facebook;
“Gillian King LOL… but Antony, did you notice that the source is good ole “cash for climate” Watts… he’s paid by Heartland to push this line.”
Gillian King is a FB troll AGW believer…and since this story broke she’s been going mad about this.
the old saying is “If you are taking flak, you know you are over the target.”
thank you for the w*rk you do and don’t let the scum drag you down.
I’m with Squidly: first laugh, then sue. Then bank and laugh again.
Anthony, you are a beacon of light in a world full of fog and smoke. Keep up the good work.
re post by: John Billings says: February 15, 2012 at 3:38 pm
Your comment was there for me to read some time ago, and still there when I checked it on reading your first complaint about it supposedly being missing. I suspect you managed to pass over it or miss it somehow, resulting in you thinking it was missing when it wasn’t.
re post: John Billings says: February 15, 2012 at 3:44 pm
Are you brain dead?? If your posts were being censored, do you REALLY think that they would then be allowed to show up in someone else’s post and not be censored there also? Or do you just think we’re brain dead and will believe, oh the horrors, that for some reason they’re out to get you, and only you?? Please.
Carpet burns on knees coming up for Leo and Richard methinks…
My full support, Anthony, both for you personally and for WUWT?
Lucky I went long on popcorn yesterday.*
*The only word I understand in the sentence is popcorn.
At 9:59 PM on 15 February, peeke provides yet another demonstration that las warmistas (also known as “watermelons,” green on the outside and red to the core) are blankly illiterate when it comes to the language of formal logic, conflating the technical term argumentum ad hominem with simple incidental insult.
I wish there was something resembling plain bloody sense in that 9:59 PM post of peeke‘s to recap here, but it’s simply incoherent sputtering. The most that can be extracted from it is that peeke thinks I’d committed argumentum ad hominem by condemning his pitiful noise as the equivalent of clumsily shoveling bovine excrement.
Insult and argumentum ad hominem, peeke, are not the same. The former (as I’d explained) is a failure in reasoned argument which amounts to an evasion of the responsibility to focus upon the objectively verifiable factuality of an assertion by diverting your attention (and attempting to divert the attention of your disputant and other readers) to the source of the assertion instead.
Expressions of contempt for you personally, peeke, provided in addition to reasoned argument demonstrating that your position and/or presentation lacks validity, are merely incidental assessments of what can laughingly be called your “character” and ineptitude.
Las warmistas who frequent only those alarmist venues in which their incestuous exchanges are protected by censoring co-religionists equally committed to the erroneous orthodoxy of their pitiful junk science, tend so reliably to be incapable of reasoned argument that when they venture out of their stuffy reservations to encounter intellectually skeptical persons who have considered and spurned the catastrophists’ Cargo Cult Science as devoid of supporting evidence, methodlogical rigor, or even (in so very many cases) lucidity of thought, seem to show a robust tendency to believe that by inappropriately spouting Latinate technical terms, they can project an illusion of education they’ve never attained.
The use of “ad hominem” in lieu of “insult” seems to be one of this fellahin crowd’s most consistent (and truly pitiful) bits of putzelry.
You would’ve evaded this error, peeke, if you’d ever so much as participated in your secondary school’s debate team, or gotten a passing grade in an undergraduate course in elementary logic.
But, of course, it’s a pretty solid bet that you hadn’t. Damn, bubbie, but you’re on the Web. You could sure hell as pop open a browser tab and look it up, couldn’tcha? You want links?
Inasmuch as a warmista insensately pushing the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) conjecture despite its complete dearth of supporting evidence is either gullible in the extreme (that’s “gullible” as in “not skeptical”) or maliciously duplicitous, peeke, you really ought to be used to a boatload of simple incidental insult when you try to shovel your manure over the shoes of people who are properly skeptical when assessing the preposterous bogosity of the “We’re All Gonna Die!” man-made global climate change hokum that’s predicated on the supposed adverse effects of a trace increase in a trace atmospheric component while deliberately evading consideration of factors undeniably more puissant in their effects on changes in the Earth’s atmosphere, oceans, and land surface areas.
Consider that when you get insulted as well as refuted, peeke, it’s only because you’ve earned it.
re post by: R. Gates says: February 15, 2012 at 5:13 pm
Of course theft = theft.
For that matter, theft = hacked files
However, theft ≠ leaked, whistleblower, or found on public ftp server.
The UK police are VERY careful to always write leaked or hacked, and alleged crime, or the like. After all this time, they’ve been unable to even establish that there was actually any crime involved.
Police, however, ARE required to investigate any reported, alleged crimes. That doesn’t mean a crime actually occurred, only that one was reported and possible.
Before climategate II occurred, they were so hot on the alleged crime that not a single person had been charged, and they didn’t even have a single policeman or staffer working on the issue full time. Not one.
Get it?
The fun part here is that, just like the typewriters of old, all printers have their own forensic signatures caused by the tiny variations in the wear and manufacture of the print train. So this Epson printer can be identified by the police. It won’t be any good chucking it in the Shenandoah River as all documents ever printed by it will show the same signature. So our poor old perpetrator now has to round up every page ever printed and destroy it before the police get there. Lieutenant Columbo, eat your heart out, that it could be this easy. It sure ain’t rocket science!
Well, my attempt at 1:29 am, to have a “does not equal” symbol, clearly didn’t work. My apologies.
Was meant to have a “not equal” symbol, so it said “theft does not equal leaked, whistleblower, or found on public ftp server.
[ Fixed. Use and ampersand, then a pound sign, then x2260; including the semi-colon. That is the ampersand escapes, the pound sign and the x say to use a hex representation of the unicode, and 2260 is the hex unicode for the NE symbol and the ampersand ends the escape.
-ModE (the compulsive fixing one 😉 ]
re severely faulty logic in post: JC Leblond says: February 15, 2012 at 5:27 pm, and used in other posts too…
Do you, and others who have posted along these lines, not see that this logic/rationale would only make sense if the people who released the documents never had access to the funding and budget documents or information??? Clearly, however, they had those documents in hand. Which means they could easily fabricate something using those very numbers to try to make it look more real. I’m not saying that the document is or isn’t fake – I’m just saying that trying to ‘prove’ one document out of 8 is supposedly real by saying the document wouldn’t have figures or information from other documents, when all of those very documents were clearly also obtained/stolen at the same time is just nuts.
> If you find it “exciting” to update an article…
I’m not entirely sure what you’re talking about. One of these? Perhaps this? That restored valid, useful, and unquestionably true info, that someone was trying to censor for political reasons.
> to post the funding sources on the final product like is done with scientific papers
Some odd stuff there. Grants would normally be known up-front, not post-publication.
> CO2… natural emissions are 20 times higher than human emissions”
And they want to teach children that? Oh dear.
Anthony, I want you to know that you have my support.
I noticed that the poor little trollies are claiming that somehow the Heartland Institute is unethical and they refer to the second-hand smoke controversy. So I did a very quick search….. well, it turns out that the article I found is about the junk science involved in the decision-making which is fair enough.
Note: I actually do think that there are valid concerns about second-hand smoke but that is not the point…..
Now I understand why we’ve been ‘given’ consensus science, CAGW and the rest, and why warmists are clinging on to these memes for dear life.
The poor dears are simply too thick to use their own little grey cells.
What is so hard to understand that the $44,000 are for a project which is in work, and not yet published?
How many times do they need to have Anthony say this? Does he have to post this every ten minutes until they finally, after hours and days, actually get it?
Strewth – until now, I had still assumed there was enough intelligence spread around. Seems all they are capable of is repeating what they’ve been told by ‘teacher’, with no input from their own neurones.
Pitiful.
An avalanche of great supportive comments.
A shed load of vistors , some of whom will become regular readers.
The exposure of absolutely no wrong doing on Anthony’s part.
The exposure of the idiotic hyperbole of the warmista attack dogs showing the levels of desperation they have descended to. Forgery! Really guys it’s pathetic.
The dogs bark but the caravan moves on.
That was great, now let’s get back to the science chaps.
I may be repeating someone else here (the comments are over 550 already), so forgive me in that case.
Let’s cut to the chase here. You need some funding for an on-line temperature plotting system? Where’s your PayPal button? WUWT needs new servers or bandwidth? No problem, I’m ready to click away. Wikipedia did it, so why can’t WUWT? In the name of full transparency you can publish your budget right here; I’m betting you’ll find enough readers who are willing to chip in the necessary funds.
Goldenberg has ammended the article to note that at least one of the documents is likely fake, immediately after a quote from the fake document.
Having been informed, and acknowledging the fact, and despite this to continue to publish the lies; surely this must be actionable.
Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature study
Donors
…
Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation ($150,000)
…
http://berkeleyearth.org/donors/
MSNBC is still essentially reporting “fake but accurate.”
Bill, your career (in a sane world anyway) is Dedman walking.
O.T.- sort of..
Maybe another little silver lining to this? With all of the Free (at Anthony’s expense) publicity of WUWT, maybe this could help boost his standing in the Weblog Awards…
Wouldn’t that be a kick in the pants?
Anthony, Fight the good fight!!
@ Mike Hodges, 7:17pm:
Mike, you’re a genius! I’ll have my one-quarter of a small gas station write a company cheque for $5.00 to Dr. David Suzuki and his Foundation. That’ll settle HIS science!
What’s more, the cheque will probably bounce. Oh frabjous day!
I just want to add my voice to the many who believe in your integrity, Anthony. Between you and your volunteers you’ve again proved the power of one. Truth will out. Everytime.
So be not afraid of the slings and arrows that fly past you. They come from either ignorant or prejudiced people. Neither are worth worrying about.
As the words of a wonderful old Christian hymn says, “Praise God and on Him cast your cares”. Sleep tight, Anthony.
Last gasp of a desperate and dying AGW fraud.
To be expected really, fair means or foul, makes no difference to these shysters.
This i feel wont be the last pathetic attempt by a discredited “movement” (i always think of bowels when i hear that word:) ) which is pretty apt in this case because thats where theyve dragged this sorry excuse for an “expose” from.
At least the Climategate files are real, the agw crowd couldnt get the goods so theyve fabbed them up, theyre pathetic but better than that theyre screwed and they know it. 😉
Chin up Mr W, theyre running scared, theyre on their last legs and they know the gigs up, as ever the truth will ALWAYS win, and it will always come out, no matter what they say do or think about.
[SNIP: This is both juvenile and a violation of site policy. -REP]
The timing is interesting. So close to the revelations about Media Matters ties to the White House.
Hmmmm……
http://mediamatters.org/search/tag/climate_change
http://in.news.yahoo.com/video/opinion-15749653/is-the-white-house-coordinating-with-media-matters-28282054.html
Chris-
I was thinking the same thing. I see an enemies list coming out much like 40 years ago
I hope the news papers blow it out to show the public how much each side gets. Gore alone spends $100,000,000 per year.
[SNIP: Fine, you don’t like WUWT. -REP]
Illigitimi non carborundum, Anthony…
You are winning…
Mike the plumber
Anthony – I’ve read the Black Stabber’s article a few times now and from what I can see his only complaint with you is that you live and breath. Beyond that he has nothing to offer the debate, and everything about the post is what I expect from British news reporting at the best of times, and the Beeb at all times.
If you could work on that livey breathy problem this whole thing will blow over – there’s nothing the Brits can do about the quality of reporting.
Given that it’s so clear and obvious that AGW is a failed theory, why is it that those that have knowledge of this science have the need of secretive funding sources and “backdoor methods” to get it out there?
Why is it this science, that is so obvious that even the science amateurs that frequent Anthony’s blog are adamant they can disprove AGW, can’t make a dent in the scientific process?
You’d have to believe in a massive conspiracy to believe their efforts are being thwarted by an established science Bloch.
Is that what you believe, Anthony? If not, why do you allow your blog to be used as a platform from which to allow your commenters and posters to make such claims? And if your claim is that you are allowing free speech, why do you disallow comments and posts of a similar nature but from “the other side”?
****
William M. Connolley says:
February 16, 2012 at 1:51 am
****
Mr. Connolley, a polite request:
Please stop polluting Anthony’s website w/your vile, disgusting propaganda links. TIA and have a nice day.
the more publicity for this the better because it only exposes desperate measures are being resorted to to discredit anyone who questions the edifice of AGW despite the millions/ billions poured into supporting it. Keep up he good work anthony I hope this gets your work more widely recognised in manstream media
It is appearing in the dutch news at this moment. I feel sick, i am worried and mad as hell! Anthony i read your site every day with much pleasure and will do so in the future! This way i can teach and school my family, friends and Coworkers.
Dont let the msm get to ya! Its all à smear campaign to discredit you!
For what it is worth.. I will defend u, even if it is the last thing i do!
Peace!
Ah, I just found the “donate” button over on the right side of the page. Here’s to your new temperature service!
William M. Connolley says:
February 16, 2012 at 1:51 am
> If you find it “exciting” to update an article…
> CO2… natural emissions are 20 times higher than human emissions”
And they want to teach children that? Oh dear.
———————–
Oh dear, you are back after your first inane comments. I went to my 10th grade son’s after school P.O.L.
There were several sadly misinformed presentations of CAGW. I talked to every one of these students. I decided against trashing their ignorance, and instead to ask them if they new of any benfits to increasing CO2. Not one of these kids could think of one. None of them understood the carbon cycle. They were, however, nicely dressed little CAGWbots, dutifully presenting the misinformation you have worked so hard to perserve.
Faked climate data, faked consensus, faked emails…..is there a trend developing here?
If Obama is so much for putting government data on the web….why not use MindGap…..
A wise friend of mine once told me: “No good deed goes unpunished!”
The fact this is in the MSM news shows it is as coordinated as press releases of alarmist papers in Nature or GRL…
Memo to R. Gates:
Now, R., do you have an honest, official reference (no Media Matters or their ilk is allowed) that states unequivocally that a crime was committed?
We’d all be pleased to see it. And if it isn’t forthcoming soon, consider yourself “spanked” on this “theft” issue, because as far as your constant yammering is concerned and displayed for everybody to see, we all “get it”.
(Your problem is you don’t like how this is all “coming down”, R., and I don’t blame you–there’s this little matter of retribution that the courts will take care of when they consider the gargantuan fraud that has been going on regarding CAGW, and I hope it starts with Michael Mann. Then we’ve got a whole cast of characters to go after in this tragedy.)
Shawn Halayka says:
February 15, 2012 at 10:51 am
It took me a day to write up the trend code for HadCRUT3, and another month of extremely part time work for the OpenGL visualizer. For free.
Perhaps you would like to help Anthony then?
As we all know, taking money from anyone is a corrupting process. Any good that happens is quickly clouded by entanglement. It should always be done visibly (with fanfare), from the beginning, to avoid covert corruption and subsequent need for cover-up and damage control. If ANYTHING must remain hidden… Can that “thing” be good? GK
“there’s this little matter of retribution that the courts will take care of when they consider the gargantuan fraud that has been going on regarding CAGW, and I hope it starts with Michael Mann. Then we’ve got a whole cast of characters to go after in this tragedy.)”
Ah yes, there’s the moderator stepping in to remove juvenile posts again…
Are you people sick, that you can’t see how you’ve become the mirror’s image of that which you say you abhor? Sickness is the only thing to describe what has been created at this site. But then, we get to see for ourselves exactly what the historical flat-Earthers were and how they operated. That will be your legacy, Anthony. But it will be recorded digitally for those in the future to know exactly who you were and what you did. Ironically, you will come to serve science in a way that you least expected!
Anthony,
You may not be a BBC licence-fee payer, but the BBC site posts adverts in the USA which are not shown in the UK. So the BBC may have advertisers who are not impressed by Richard Black’s treatment of you. I think the article also displayed some latent anti-American sentiments.
Being born in the USA, I have dual nationality, and the British part of me doesn’t feel very proud today.
There will be a good outcome. Look at all the nice folks who will be new here and discover some truth thanks to forgery from the ranks of CAGW’s ship is sinking desperation.
@Exp says:
February 16, 2012 at 6:51 am
Do you have a point or are you just an angry young man that’s been lied to for years.
I worked in customer service where angry people use to call up so let me try and help you out here, count backwards from 10 to zero and then before making another angry comment take a look aroiund Antonys blog and learn something, maybe there is a question on CAGW you would actualy like answered.
Or prove me and everyone else that sees such drivel on the internet daily right and carry on foaming.
David> There were several sadly misinformed presentations of CAGW
Without you saying what is wrong, it is hard to judge. Given that you react badly to my pointing out the problems with the natural-fluxes-are-greater-than-human statement, I’m not sure I’d trust your judgement.
> None of them understood the carbon cycle
It looks like you don’t, either.
Hello Anthony,
Please continue to stand tall and firm in your pursuit of the truth. Your enemies will aways hate you for your moral stands, but they were aways going to oppose any “heretic”. I know that these unwarranted attacks on you are painful to bear and I wish that you did not have to be subjected to them. However, all who expose falsehoods are hated by liars. Sunlight, however is the only disinfectant that can overpower their mendacity.
Your friends and other truth seekers will stand with you and support you, even if all they can provide is moral support.
Sincerely and most respectfully,
wermet
@Tucci78
I am not a “Warmista”.
peeke says: February 16, 2012 at 10:40 am
Then stop acting and pontificating like one!
“If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.”
Megan McArdle has what appears to be a smoking gun. See “Update” near the bottom:
And nor should you ever expect them to offer any donations to you because CAGW is as good for their bottom line as it is for the federal government’s revenue stream. Limiting fossil fuel use does not hurt big oil companies at all, it helps them. It hurts their competition – small oil companies and independent oil exploration companies. Restricting supply via CAGW increases the price which increases big oil profits. Increased big oil profits benefits them AND the federal government by way of increased tax revenue.
Every dime of that tax revenue comes from one place – our pockets at the pump.
Exp says:
February 16, 2012 at 9:07 am
That will be your legacy, Anthony. But it will be recorded digitally for those in the future to know exactly who you were and what you did.
You’re so naive you don’t realize the same applies to you – and you’ll have longer to regret it!
Just in from the Guardian.
And now they are eating from the trough spreading misinformation, adjusted data, fake documents and brazen lies
Interesting!?
Anthony posted many of the inaccuracies that were slimed around the net eagerly by the warmistas AND in the process he voluntarily corrects them with facts where applicable.
Heartland issued a press release that clearly identifies at least one document as a forgery and alerts us to some of the other documents may be “modified” or perhaps in CAGW speak, “adjusted”; in either case, documents that are wholly forged or partially forged are still criminal offenses.
References using or based upon forgeries or fraudulent information, especially those that were identified as forgeries constitutes libel.
I rather think it quaint that all of these trolls have congregated here to knowingly bandy or imply false information or premises; and that many are doing so after being publicly informed of the corrections.
Beginning with the thief, proceeding with the forger, then the CAGW mulge column writers, (I refuse to use the respectable word journalist for them) and now the rallying cry of the trolls, especially those posts after 11:45AM. Maybe you won’t need outside funding Anthony?
I’m not big on suing, but this is a case where it needs to happen. Most major news outlets are reporting on this now – and it’s a complete retread of the Rather/Bush forgeries in the past – they’re so happy to have their ideas ‘vindicated’ they don’t even care if it might be a forgery. Heritage & Anthony need to push the libel angle HARD and PUBLICLY. It’s very possible this act could provide a major tipping point.
Since I have not looked at the documents I can be accused of flying blind, but I do note the mention of “Heartland Insider” which is meant to give the impression that the documents are leaked. I am going to contend that “Heartland Insider” does not exist.
Let me explain: Ulsterman who now has his own blog site, talks to someone known as White House Insider. Many people have assumed that Ulsterman was making the whole thing up… in my view, maybe, but then again maybe not…. because there are some things that point to inside information. Ulsterman also reports on Wall Street Insider and this man is completely different to his other contact. Then there is someone who attempts to imitate Ulsterman but who writes in a nasty snarky manner and whose writings lack total coherence and they are never worth reading. That person who writes as “And another thing”, also write “Palin Insider”, which is again something that is completely made up and full of falsehood… some of the false stuff is patently obvious.
It would seem to me that this release of “documents” fits the category of the writer who writes as “And Another Thing”, probably being someone associated with a George Soros think tank or similar front. I am not saying that it is the same person, but that the category is the same.
What has given this away is the attempt to slime Heartland with the falsehood about the education program. Yes, thinking about it, I am convinced that this is the real evidence that he document is a fake because it actually sounds like a leftist’s idea of the libertarian think tank… especially with the jibe about being anti-science.
As I wrote last night, a quick check regarding what Heartland wrote about a possible causation between second hand smoke and lung cancer indicated that they were concerned about the junk science behind the push against cigarettes and the tobacco companies. Note: it is the JUNK SCIENCE. What I noted was that the research was quite paltry and that there is the same issue regarding consensus meaning that no other point of view or alternate research will be accepted. I indicated that yes there is a problem with second hand smoke because too much can and does cause respiratory illness. The problem with the cancer claim is that the research findings is based upon very small samples and extrapolated out to being 5000 deaths but without the supporting evidence. Hence, there is a link between the two issues based upon the way in which debate is shut down!! I will need to do more research and blog at my own site on the subject because those who claim that Heartland have done anything dishonest etc. certainly need to eat crow or humble pie.
In the large number of comments, it’s probably already been mentioned, but to Anthony and others I say this: You know you’re over the target when you start taking flak!
But action to combat the hype about CAGW is not the only target of funding by Heartland and other think tanks either. So to compare the total budget of Heartland with the total budget of various NGOs is meaningful..
Anthony said that he thought the Heartland post was sloppily written. Here’s what I think was meant (my insertions bolded):
The Truth about DeSmogBlog
“DeSmogBlog is a smear site founded by a scientifically unqualified public relations man, James Hoggan and funded by a convicted money launderer, John Lefebvre. The irony here is their favorite tactic is to attempt to smear those they disagree with as funded by “dirty money”. Since it’s creation in 2006 the site has done nothing but post poorly researched propaganda with a clear intent to smear respected scientists, policy analysts or groups who dare oppose an alarmist position on global warming. Their articles frequently reference unreliable sources such as Wikipedia and Sourcewatch since they are unable to find any fact based criticisms of those they criticize in respected news sources.”
http://www.populartechnology.net/2011/04/truth-about-desmogblog.html
Scanning the Guardian, just to see if any softening of their stance has changed, I found this little snippet:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/15/climate-sceptics-pai-heartland-institute?intcmp=122
Congratulations Anthony – you are number one enemy – and just look at the huge figures all the true scientists receive – jeez I’d spend almost that total amount (of all the collective annual payments) on my Daughter’s Wedding !!!!!
Now we know just how much skeptics are paid – can someone do the same for those in the collective feeding trough?
As in politics, I think this discussion, and other scientific ones, are no longer worthwhile. They are just mudslinging matches. Once people take a position they rarely shift. For those readers here, your hypocrisy is clear. So is mine. ‘Climategate’ was an example of all these nefarious, malicious groups and individuals shilling for research dollars. Now a similar event happens to Heartland catching Mr. Watts in the mix. You’ll claim they are not equivalent. Other people will say they are. Round and round we go. Mr. Watts, you should call up Mr. Mann and tell him now you know how it feels. We have allowed special interests on ALL sides to divide and label. We are all fodder for these manipulations. We are all complicit in this mess. We are all failing to be reasonable. Having all these discussions in text, without body language and facetime simply magnifies our inability to judge objectively, competently, scientifically. I hope the best for you Mr. Watts as I do for Mr. Mann. I honestly believe you are both probably trying your best for all. Unfortunately you are both, as are all other people involved in this mess, caught in the gears of BS.
At 7:01 PM on 16 February, linzel writes:
Whaddaya mean “we,” Kemo Sabe?
Like hell have those of us on the responsibly and scrupulously skeptical side “in this mess” been “complicit,” any more than can a man defending himself from an armed robber be considered “complicit” in that thieving predator’s crime.
Anybody who tries to aver a moral equivalence between Mr. Watts and “Hockey Stick Graph” Michael Mann – whose knowing statements of falsehoods in his federal government grant funding applications are unarguably actionable on both civil and criminal grounds – has lost touch with objective reality, and deserves damnation in the strongest possible terms.
@Tucci78
You prove my points exactly. Thank you. Making ad hominems and bad analogies to thieving doesn’t help the discussion in any way. Cheers
At 8:13 PM on 16 February, linzel posts nothing more than:
Pardon my Sicilian, but oy, gevalt! Yet another demonstrable damned illiterate who conflates simple insult (which he has unarguably earned) with argumentum ad hominem, a technical term properly used only to describe a fallacy of logic.
As I’d discussed in detail when hammering peeke a bit earlier:
linzel, your ineptitude in discourse is of a piece with your warmista co-religionists, evidence that you are both bereft of education and fatuously pretentious in your clumsy presentation in this forum.
Plainly, the character assessments you’ve received at my hands are not “ad hominems” (Gawd, what incredible gormlessness!) and you’ve yet to support any assertion that my “analogies to thieving” – i.e., that is the lawful right of a victim of armed robbery to defend himself and his property – are “bad” in any way.
If you have anything in the way of reasoned argument for that position, you hapless noodge, put it in front of the readers in this forum and let ’em judge for themselves.
They sure as hell can’t repose any trust in your powers of discrimination, can they?
[SNIP: Nice bit of sock-puppetry, linzel. Blog policies prohibit switching handles. You are either linzel or sciential, but you’re not going to be both. -REP]
At 3:36 AM on 17 February, using the handle of “sciential,” we have linzel addressing my post of 10:42 PM on 16 February with:
…which got replaced by a moderator with:
I’ve recapitulated linzel‘s message – which was properly removed by the moderator on procedural grounds as sock-puppetry rather than due to its content – because it’s a valuable demonstration of las warmistas‘ proclivity for evading the address of issues themselves (in this case the fatuous but repeatedly demonstrated proclivity among such leftie-lusers for the improper use of the expression “ad hominem” as a pseudointellectually Latinate synonym for “insult”) by way of their own perpetration of actual argumentum ad hominem, yammering about my “apparent superiority” and whining that Mr. Watts is guilty of running a “Great little show here” in which vacuous ineptitude like linzel‘s isn’t protected against contemptuous criticism thereof.
It’s not often that one can write “quod erat demonstrandum” with such wonderful pertinence.
linzel, since you plainly have no faith in your own ability to distinguish truth from fiction, why on earth should we be interested in your opinion?
I dunno. Wednesday morning I put a link to the Guardian thing in Tips ‘n’ Notes, Thursday I was too busy to spend much time on the interweb, and today … multiple threads all over, hundreds of comments and ample evidence of bogosity (now, there’s a surprise, given the band of blatherskites involved!). I know I’m getting on a bit, but still, the manically hyperactive speed of events seems to get more manic with every day that passes.
Anthony, my dear fellow, the longer you keep WUWT going, the better you look, and the worse the blather brigade make themselves look, over and over. Truth beats ‘truthiness’ every time. Top marks … again!
73 de Steve
coeruleus says:
The IRS already examined that and is fine with Greenpeace’s status.
——-
“Federal security services have identified Greenpeace and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals as the kind of “multi-issue extremist” groups that pose a threat to Canadians, documents obtained under Access to Information show.”
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/security-services-deem-environmental-animal-rights-groups-extremist-threats/article2340162/
William M. Connolley says:
February 16, 2012 at 1:51 am
“Some odd stuff there. Grants would normally be known up-front, not post-publication.”
==============
Can you point me towards a link to support this statement ?
Or, in fact, was there nobody in the forest when the tree fell .
William M. Connolley says:
February 16, 2012 at 1:51 am
> If you find it “exciting” to update an article…
I’m not entirely sure what you’re talking about. One of these? Perhaps this? That restored valid, useful, and unquestionably true info, that someone was trying to censor for political reasons.
> to post the funding sources on the final product like is done with scientific papers
Some odd stuff there. Grants would normally be known up-front, not post-publication.
> CO2… natural emissions are 20 times higher than human emissions”
And they want to teach children that? Oh dear.
One source of info (not wikipedia anyway, OK New Scientist) quotes natural emissions of 770Gt pa vs 26 Gt human (with 40% reabsorbed). Happy to help you make good old wiki useful again.
link here
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11638-climate-myths-human-co2-emissions-are-too-tiny-to-matter.html
Why would you want to hide that from children? What is there to hide?
u.k.(us) says:
February 17, 2012 at 2:53 pm
William M. Connolley says:
February 16, 2012 at 1:51 am
“Some odd stuff there. Grants would normally be known up-front, not post-publication.”
==============
Can you point me towards a link to support this statement ?
Or, in fact, was there nobody in the forest when the tree fell .
Good point – where can we find out what Hansen, Gore, et al are going to be working on in a few months time? Work can then start to discredit it before they’ve even started. Post modern science at its best? Let’s hope we can all do a bit better than that.
Seth Borenstein published one of the meanest and most mendacious articles I’ve ever seen in my life. It is all over the Web, including Yahoo News. The only “confirmation” Borenstein was waiting for was an opinion given by four (unnamed) persons of his own choice.
I really don’t understand, what Mr. Watts hopes to gain by being polite to such scoundrels as Borenstein, or by allowing one of the worst thought policemen of the AGW movement, Connolley, to post here.
Thank you so much for deleting my lengthy post on how to complain to the BBC about their treatment of this subject. After all, I don’t spend hours and hours checking my facts until they are 100% correct, my efforts are not useful or informative to your readers – they just appear like magic and require no work at all on my part to post on your site, just as it takes no effort for you to hit the delete button.
[Reply: Caroline, your post has not been deleted. Please look again. if you need help, it’s here. -REP]
Still waiting for Joe Bast to confirm the authenticity of the documents. So quick to demonize the one, but no impetus to confirm the others.
Ian, I know just how you feel and sympathize. I really do. Those other documents are just so chock full of shocking and incriminating details. I admire your restraint in waiting for Bast’s confirmation before tearing into them. The delay is nothing short of diabolical.
Alexander Feht says:
February 18, 2012 at 1:54 am
….
I really don’t understand, what Mr. Watts hopes to gain by being polite to such scoundrels as Borenstein, or by allowing one of the worst thought policemen of the AGW movement, Connolley, to post here.
Politeness is a personal virtue that encourages communication as opposed to conflict where disagreements may arise. It sets off the civilized from those of nye kulturny. Allowing a poster to communicate a dissenting message also permits you to contrast messages. Connolley actually accepted the drivel in the CM doc. It also permits you to see just how badly the writer conceptualizes his opponents. You are also capable of gaging how desperate the writer is by how far of the politness wagon they’ve fallen.
Why are Anthony Watt and the Heartland so upset about “stolen” email?
Don’t they still post links, at least, if not file server copies of the email stolen from the CRU? The so called “Climate Gate”.
Pick a position on redistributing stolen email and stick to it please.
Kelly Manning says:
February 21, 2012 at 6:23 pm
“Pick a position on redistributing stolen email and stick to it please.”
Kelly, somebody forged a document, stuck it into the stuff sent to DeSmogBlog, and the contents of the forgery are now used to defame the Heartland Institute, its donors and its projects by the mainstream press.
You should be proud.
[snip . . try and contribute . . kbmod]
Um, looking a mite paranoid there friend:
So, just to check, I put the time stamp of your supposed ‘censorship’ into the ‘find’ box. Guess what, if found your “censored” posting… I think maybe you need to practice your reading skills.
BTW, there are no censors here, but there are moderators. Things can sit in the moderation queue until some of the ALL VOLUNTEER moderator staff have time to service the queue. Sometimes WordPress will put things in the SPAM queue (for reasons only WordPress can explain) and then they can sit longer.
When folks see something offensive, it is replaced with a [snip] and some ‘tag’ of the particular moderator. So if there were something wrong with your comment, it would have been “snipped”, not censored.
With that said, I have seen some “serial idiots” put on ‘time out’ and THEN their comments get canned. (As one would expect when told IN ADVANCE it is going to happen… and they still don’t catch a clue about being offensive.)
So I suggest you get down off your Jihad Horse. Not only are you looking a bit silly, but your starting be a PITA and some of us would like to read things that matter and not paranoid fantasies…
Um, no. POLICE often conduct raids on SUSPICION of a crime, not an actual fact of crime. Further, the Tallbloke raid in particular was a botched farce in that Tallbloke had done nothing wrong and any decent forensics guy could see that. It was a FISHING EXPEDITION and netted nothing. Ergo no charges, before or after.
(My credentials include being employed to do forensics work and being involved with Law Enforcement from about 16 as an Eagle Scout were we trained with the County Sheriff and rode on calls, on up to catching a couple of “perps” when hired to go undercover at a computer company as a ‘geek’ assisting them a couple of decades later… Oh, and a few dozen rounds of “Managers And The Law” classes – mandatory every 2 years for most of a decade where I was working. Oh, and reporting to the Corporate Lawyer VP for a few years… I’ve also managed building security – including surveillance equipment and law enforcement relations. I’ll leave out the Marital Arts training as irrelevant, but my Sensei was a Police Sergeant to give some perspective…)
Furthermore, there is a crime evident in what was done to Heartland, under both Federal Fraud and California impersonation statutes. Plain, direct, and obvious. AND confessed as of now.
In the case of the UEA/CRU Emails (AKA Climategate) the emails clearly indicate “malfeasance” and attempts to blackmail editorial boards, along with deliberate attempts to slander others along with a load of other illegal or immoral acts. Including attempts to thwart the FOIA LAW. All evidence shows that the emails were LEAKED not STOLEN (a very important distinction) in an attempt to show this suborning of justice. That makes it a LEGAL and PROTECTED act under UK Law (along with an act of considerable heroism if actually done by an insider) under the “Whistleblower Statutes”.
Get it? Get it?…
So once again the “Moral Relativism” folks have trouble understanding “follow the law” and that just because they LIKE one outcome and not the other, that does not determine the actual legality… But boy can they “make stuff up”…
I suggest not trying to make a moral equivalence out of the two events as every time we see that being done we will point out the repugnant acts INSIDE the Climategate emails and the Whistle Blower Legality of Foia vs the blatantly illegal Phishing and theft of BENIGN but private Board Of Directors Confidential documents with NOTHING remotely nefarious in them.
How does that phrase go?… ‘Own Goal by Warmers’? Again…
E.M. Smith writes:
Not that I don’t agree with you about all this, but towards the end of your post there’s a whole buncha inappropriate (I’ve heard it called “pompous”) capitalization. One dictionary puts the rule like so:
Oh, the “caps lock” bit isn’t bad as an emphasis modality, but unless there’s something like a title or trademark concerned, expressions like “Phishing” and “Confidential” and “Whistle Blower Legality” in the section of your post quoted above should never get cap’d in the way you’ve done.
On t’other hand, “Foia” (like “FDA” and “USA” and “CRU”) is an acronym, and has to be written as “FOIA” to keep that meaning clear.
I definitely agree with the legal substance of your argument. There’s nothing unsavory (much less unethical or criminal) in the legitimate Heartland documents Gleick had phished from the administrators, and only someone desperate and delusional could possibly have conjured ’em so, whereas the Climategate communications (2009 and 2011) are profoundly indicative of activities which should be pursued under prevailing federal criminal law, particularly 18 USC Chapter 96 pertaining to racketeer-influenced and corrupt organizations (RICO).
Dunno about how such things go in the U.K. The statute of limitations on their own FOI statute (18 months, by gawd!) ran before the perfidies of Prof. Jones et alia came to prosecutorial attention, but what’s the statute of limitations regarding crim. cons. over there?
@Tucci78:
Style rules written by someone else are for folks who can’t think for themselves. You might want to call it POMPOUS, I call it “Easier to hit the shift key than typing open bracket b closebracket then open bracket slash b close bracket” It is the moral equivalent of emphasis in speech.
SO no, I’m NOT going to bother changing for you, nor for a “style guide”.
Language usage is a fluid thing, it shifts and changes over time. Especially in the computer age. Thus the 😉 and /sarcoff>; and so much more…
Per Foia: I use F.O.I.A. and sometimes FOIA for the Freedom Of Information Act where the person doing the release called himself FOIA 2011 or some such. In keeping with proper names, I use Foia to designate the person.
At least on this side of the pond, Statute of Limitations starts when the crime is discovered for many / most things as I understand it.
You may now resume being the Style Police…