More Fakegate fallout. On February 28, 2012, the report Climate Change Denial in the Classroom was issued by the Committee for the Advancement of Scientific Skepticism of the Centre for Inquiry (Canada) (CFI). The related news release, Climate Change Denial in Carleton University Course Exposed by National Science Team, was issued on the same day.
I found the media response to this report, as well as the report itself, rather stunning for all the excitement surrounding it. It seemed to be nothing more than some sort of piling on “gotcha journalism” like the sorts we’ve seen in The Guardian and other left leaning newspapers since Fakegate first broke. One the biggest failures in journalism come from the Guardian, where both Leo Hickman and Suzanne Goldenberg ran with stories naming me, without so much as asking me a question first or determining if the documents were real or not. Initially I thought Goldenberg might have a modicum of journalistic sense, having the presence of mind to send me an email asking for a response, but then I discovered she’d run the story without waiting for my response, and then via an update, only including a small portion of my detailed response, as I show in entirety here.
I asked Mr. Tom Harris, who is specifically named in the report, if this course was a requirement for Earth Science undergraduates at Carleton, or if it was an elective.
He responded immediately that it was an elective, and that nobody was required to take it to get their Earth Sciences degree at Carleton. So it seems to me that all of the media angst and smear surrounding this report is simply that they don’t want students to even be able to choose to take it. The fake moral outrage displayed is quite impressive.
I asked Tom Harris to provide background for me, and he has contributed significantly to what follows, and I have edited and added as needed for this story to convey the background from his side of the story (as well as mine).
The CFI report billed itself as “an audit” of the 2011 version of the 2nd year elective course for non-Earth Science majors at Carleton—“Climate Change: An Earth Sciences Perspective” (course designator ERTH2402). ERTH2402 is a “survey” course that presents an overview of many of the most important areas of climate science at the level of an educated layperson. It has attracted a viewing audience in the general public via CUTV, Carleton’s cable TV station seen across Canada and, via the Web, internationally.
The ERTH2402 course was created by Carleton University Earth Sciences Professor Tim Patterson, PhD, and he taught the course for over a decade. Due to his public climate education work with Professor Patterson since 1998, his teaching experience, and his science and technology background, Mr. Tom Harris, Executive Director of the International Climate Science Coalition, was selected to teach the 2009 version of the course while Dr. Patterson was on sabbatical. 95% of the course material presented to students by Mr. Harris in 2009 was the same as that presented by Dr. Patterson in 2008.
The 2009 version of ERTH2402 was taught successfully with approximately 500 students completing the course. Consequently, Mr. Harris was invited to teach ERTH2402 three more times—twice in 2010 and again in 2011, achieving consistently high student ratings. A total of about 1,500 students completed the course in the four sessions taught by Mr. Harris (who describes the course here). ERTH2402 was not offered in 2012 but Professor Patterson will teach the course again in 2013.
In September 2010, Carleton University postdoctoral fellow Dr. Christopher Hassell, a contract biology instructor (Conservation Biology) at the university, requested, and was granted access to the lectures for the January – April 2011 term. In his September 13, 2010 e-mail to the university “Video on Demand” staff, Dr. Hassell wrote, “I am not interested in taking the course, but simply desire some background information on the lectures” (see p. 89 in the subject audit report).
Dr. Hassell then worked with three other authors (two other biology PhDs and a communications professional) to complete the 98 page report “Climate Change Denial in the Classroom”. At no point before media release of the “audit” did the authors contact Mr. Harris or inform him of their work. Mr. Harris states he has had no previous contact with any of the authors.
The first main stream media to cover the report was The Guardian (London, UK). Their piece was: “Heartland associate taught ‘biased’ climate course at Ottawa university—Expert audit finds man connected with climate sceptic think tank taught climate course to students at Carleton University.”
Approximately one hour before publication on The Guardian Webpage on Feb 28, the author of the piece, The Guardian’s US environment correspondent Suzanne Goldenberg, left a message on Professor Patterson’s voice mail requesting an interview. Professor Patterson did not receive the message until after Goldenberg’s piece was uploaded to the Guardian’s Website. In her article, Goldenberg wrote, “The head of the earth sciences department, Tim Patterson, did not respond to requests for comment.”
How could he? Sheesh. Ms. Goldenberg’s method here almost ensures that no comment could be made before publication. And judging from how she reported on the 2009 Heartland ICCC, where she immediate jumps in the headline from skeptics to “deniers” it seems clear she has a built in bias, perhaps even an irrational hatred, like we see from other environmental reporters on a regular basis.
Goldenberg did however speak with Mr. Harris earlier in the afternoon. Harris had the presence of mind to ask Ms. Goldenberg if he could record the interview (she gave the OK) and the 26 minute interview may be heard here (MP3 audio) and the verbatim transcript of the discussion you can read here: Tom_Harris_Interview_with_the_Guardian-28-02-12 (1) (PDF)
Mr. Harris also corresponded with Goldenberg by e-mail four hours before the piece went live to ensure she was aware of the details of Mr. Harris’ connection with the Heartland Institute. According to him, when he last taught at Carleton he was not a “Heartland associate” (and still is not) and did not become an unpaid “Policy Advisor” with Heartland until approximately six months after he had completed teaching the Carleton course.
On 28 February 2012 19:36, Tom Harris tom.harris@xxxxxxx wrote:
Dear Suzanne,I forgot to mention that Heartland asked me to be a Policy Advisor a few months back and I accepted (you can see their many advisors at http://heartland.org/experts). There is no remuneration for this position and I have no assigned responsibilities, aside from commenting when interesting items related to my field arise when I want to.
Tom
Mr. Harris explained to Goldenberg that Heartland encourages fair and open dialog on climate change and even hosted a friendly public debate between a “skeptic” and an “alarmist” at their last climate conference in Washington DC seven months ago. In 2010, I also talked about this at WUWT and praised Scott Denning for his choice to embrace skeptics and about the warm welcome he received. Even Joe Romm was invited to the last conference. He declined of course, because even though there would be no cost to him he can’t risk being treated warmly by climate skeptics; it might make his head explode.
This call for open and equal debate on the part of Heartland is also evidenced in their invitation to Dr. Peter Gleick to have him debate James Taylor at the Heartland Annual Dinner, which Dr. Gleick declined shortly before launching his criminal phishing attack on Heartland.
Contrary to Goldenberg’s statement that the review of the Earth Sciences course was “an expert audit”, Mr. Harris in his telephone interview (from the transcript linked above) explained to her that it was conducted by two biologists and a writer, none of whom apparently have significant expertise in Earth Sciences or Climate Science.
According to Mr. Harris, contrary to assertions in the Guardian piece, the 2011 version of the ERTH2402 course was well supported by peer reviewed science literature and was in no way extreme. It merely concluded that we are a long way from understanding the science well enough to be able to make reliable forecasts about future climate. Harris says the course was completely nonpartisan politically and avoided any sort of commercial endorsement.
Goldenberg wrote in her Guardian article:
“A team of scientists, who reviewed the videotapes of Mr. Harris’s lectures provided by the university, found 142 false, biased and misleading claims”.
Mr. Harris advises me that he will release an appropriate response to those claims when he has thoroughly reviewed the CASS “audit” report. However, as of this writing, no problems have yet been raised by Carleton in the course material as taught in 2011. It appears that Carelton University itself has no issue with the course material, only the CASS group and the media seem to have issues.
Suzanne Goldenberg’s Guardian piece condemning ERTH2402 is itself riddled with logical fallacies, misrepresentations, omissions, and errors, some of which were described in a letter to the editor sent by Mr. Harris to The Guardian early on February 29. So far, The Guardian has not responded or published the necessary corrections in either their Letters to the Editor or “Corrections and clarifications” sections.
If they don’t, and I’m predicting they won’t, I’ll carry the letter from Mr. Harris here as a separate post.
Here is a TV interview from yesterday with Mr. Harris:
Sickening gotcha journalism that seems intended to distract from Fakegate and the backlash there. Too bad for them that they’re losing the war.
Between the flood of PETM proves global warming, and the new bromine explosion articles, it seems they’re trying real hard to bury Glieck’s name in the papers.
I clicked on the Guardian link; to the right of the article they show a photo of Gleick with the text
“Peter Gleick on leave from Pacific Institute over Heartland leak
Climate scientist on temporary leave of absence while investigated over leak of Heartland Institute documents”
Remember how they called climategate “hack”?
Note to self: When leftist media calls something a leak, it was a hack or a phishing attack; when they call it a hack, it was a leak. Makes it all a little difficult to read but there ya go.
The warmers’ world is simply REEKING of desperation. For those who may not be aware of the ongoing political farce here in the US, the left is trying to frame the right as wanting to deny contraception to women. They have now tried to stitch it together with – gasp! – global warming!
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Ramdas told The Daily Caller that the research shows “empowering women to time their pregnancies” and avoid unwanted births would reduce carbon emissions between 8 to 15 percent globally.
“It is common sense that when women are able to plan their pregnancies, populations grow more slowly and as a result so do greenhouse gas emissions,” she explained. “Providing access to contraception and preventative health should be one of the many effective strategies used to fight climate change.”
http://dailycaller.com/2012/03/03/activists-birth-control-can-fight-global-warming/
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[snip – over the top – Anthony]
sorry – won’t happen again
Just add her to the list of biased mouth pieces of the cultist ideology of climate change. They continue to expose their pseudoscience advocacy.
They are to be mocked in ridiculed. Their lies and overt acts of deception simply need to be recorded and pointed out each time they either open their mouth or type a word. Add those writers and geologists to the ever growing long list with their attempts at subterfuge and beguilement.
Their desperation is becoming increasingly palpable.
Another Climate Fundamentalist.
The Guardian, sadly, has a long tradition of partisan reporting. As a consequence, its circulation has fallen steadily over the years to a current (Nov 2011) around 230 000. It now lags both The Telegraph and The Times. Whereas in former decades its campaigning was for social justice and based on even handed treatment of the truth, it has become mired in an increasingly bitter mindset. Not to agree with the politics of The Guardian is to be cast into the outer darkness and labelled in a way that would be familiar to those dissidents who lived behind the iron curtain. Biased and unchecked reportage is seemingly regarded as acceptable, blindly following the ‘party’ line essential to continued employment.
“CASS discovered that key messages for students contradict accepted scientific opinion. These messages include: denying that current climate change has an anthropogenic cause; dismissing the problems that carbon dioxide emissions cause because CO2 is plant food; denying the existence of the scientific consensus on the causes of climate change; and claiming that we should prepare instead for global cooling.”
The charge is CONTRADICTing OPINION and DENYING the CONSENSUS??
It would appear that the worm that caused the continual typing errors at the Grauniad has now infected the journalists and all the reporting from the ‘newspaper’ will need to be treated with the same caution and lack of trust as their spelling. However, while the typos were obvious lack of quality control the poor reporting seems to be carefully planned and seems intended to be malign.
It is a loss to the press when once reliable news sources betray journalistic ethics in the way displayed by the New York Times and at the Guardian, It is no wonder Peter Gleick felt at home dealing with them.
I know CFI of old. They control Skeptical Inquirer, but their skepticism only goes so far.
Center For Inquiry (CFI) educates on secularism and promotes scientific viewpoints, and has Special Consultative Status at the UN (ECOSOC). They also lobby Congress, The Administation and the State Deaprtment on UN-related issues.
ECOSOC Consultative Status is only granted if the NGO has “.. provided that they can demonstrate that their programme of work is of direct relevance to the aims and purposes of the United Nations ”
To hold this status, ECOSOC’s terms state that they must “..support the work of the United Nations and to promote knowledge of its principles and activities..”.
http://www.un.org/documents/ecosoc/res/1996/eres1996-31.htm
This means CFI cannot produce articles that do not support the UN and its interests, they have to be UN mouthpieces which expains why their supposedly balanced articles are never critical of the IPCC or Global Warming.
Here is a list of over 3000 ECOSOC NGOs, some of which purport to be involved scientific research, but all of which are tied to being UN zombies. They do the UN’s propaganda and viral marketing while UN remains saintly.
http://www.un.org/esa/coordination/ngo/pdf/INF_List.pdf
Check the T-shirts that many of the alarmists wear when nobody is looking. Many are fans of Che Guevera. They view their cause as a ‘revolution’ and employ the same tactics, albeit without guns – yet.
I have commented before that Biological curricula around the world requires a major facelift. They need their faces lifted out of the anti-human, socialist muck. Isn’t there enough science of creatures and plants to occupy them? When I studied engineering, there was too much tough stuff to learn with a mighty burning of the midnight oil to have the luxury of being a social activist. I believe the incredible work load of the engineering student is the reason that engineers as a group aren’t into the touchy-feely-lefty fluff that other ‘disciplines’ seem to be taught and are prone to. Probably it explains why engineers don’t number big in politics and clubby love-ins. Biologists! – steep yourselves in biological studies and make a real contribution. What in the Sam Hill do you know about earth, solar and planetary physical sciences – how can you have an opinion more useful than that of an ordinary citizen.
Unbelievably, the Guardian has managed to plumb new depths of late, with its partisan coverage of Gleick, and its blatant propaganda fest re all things climate.
They have dug a hole that they won’t get out of, while driving many to the skeptical side.
I could not read the linked report past the inclusion of Glieck’s faked money shot line regarding preventing science teaching.
There appears to be increasing desperation from the warmers. I predict a lot of noise this year.
“A team of scientists, who reviewed the videotapes of Mr. Harris’s lectures provided by the university, found 142 false, biased and misleading claims”.
Hey maybe it was “the team”, that would explain why they “found” so much wrong!
“Anyone who uses the term “denier” is not a scientist.”
Agreed. They are activists like Gleick.
Suzanne Goldenberg may be an awarded journalist, but this sort of writing is a deceptive manipulation of the truth and borders on outright lying:
1. “The head of the earth sciences department, Tim Patterson, did not respond to requests for comment.” …..To a message left on his voicemail approximately one hour before publication?
2.Described an “an expert audit” by a “team of scientists”? And it was actually conducted by two biologists and a writer, all without expertise in Earth Sciences or Climate Science?
She either no longer cares about her reputation, or like Peter Gleick is stuck with the mentality of those who have succumbed to their own self perceived sense of importance, and show the truth in that old adage: Power Corrupts.
They think they can do anything for the cause, and it will be OK, simply because they think they are ‘important people’.
This methodology appears to result in a libelous article. The fact that the requests (sic) to Tim Patterson for comment were made via voice mail only an hour before publication is strong evidence of deliberation.
Ignore the acts of desperation. It is an attempt to distract and redirect. Focus on the science. The inexorable struggle for honesty. As my father used to say “never mind what your brother is doing, focus on what you need to do.” I bet he thought I never listened.
People who fall for this type of journalistic manipulation deserve the ridicule and embarrassment that comes from backing the wrong horse.
It does not matter what your detractors say. Can they prove you wrong is what counts. Play the long game.
I would bet money that in the future it will be very difficult to find anyone who will admit they believed in global warming. Unless they are on record as having consumed the kool-aid, of course.
For heaven’s sake what else would you expect, it’s the Guardian – it is a British left wing version of the National Enquirer, with a similar standard of journalism, but with less lurid headlines. Their journalists are usually the last to let facts get in the way of a good story, as this post once again illustrates.
To many in the UK public sector, it is the equivalent of the bible, which helps explain why the country is in such an economic mess.
Any trendy left wing policy or individual receives its automatic support. Anyone daring to offer an alternative to fashionable left wing dogma is automatically abused and smeared, as has happened here.
Global warming is a fashionable left wing cause, that has become more about supporting a bloated, distortion generating, industry of bureaucrats and pseudo-scientists rather than a careful, considered examination of the data and actual observations in climate science.
Sceptical scientists criticise sceptical science course.
In other news, “Dog bites man”.
So much irony here it’s difficult to know where to start.
Good job Tom Harris! Thank you.
DirkH says:
“Remember how they called climategate “hack”?
“Note to self: When leftist media calls something a leak, it was a hack or a phishing attack; when they call it a hack, it was a leak.”
. . .
Fen’s Law:
The Left believes none of the things they lecture the rest of us about.
If it weren’t for projection, they wouldn’t have much to say.
i looked into this smear report two days ago. Yes indeed, if you disagree with the IPCC dogma you are lying or decieving or whatever, according to this CASS gang.
By the way “CASS is an active working group of the Centre for Inquiry Canada” and that mothership is involved in such ‘scientific’ projects as this one:
“KELOWNA, BC–(July 20, 2011) – After more than two months, the “Probably No God” bus ads have been reinstated on BC Transit buses in Kelowna. The Atheist Bus Campaign will finally be complete on Friday, July 22, 2011.
“The atheist bus campaign has been a long uphill battle,” said Loren Price of the Centre for Inquiry (CFI) Okanagan. “BC Transit first denied our right to run the ads, then threatened to pull the ads at the first sign of trouble, and finally appeared uninterested in fully investigating the disappearance of the original ads from their own property.”
http://www.cficanada.ca/news/media_advisory_probably_no_god_bus_ads_resurrected_on_kelowna_transit
In other words, there is no God except the UN for them.
No it wasn’t a leak. It was criminal impersonation. Then there is the forgery. The ‘leak’ description implies the document was real. About as real as the science credentials, or even the education credentials of these propagandist. They are a disgrace. And I think less and less people are afraid of their McCarthy tactics. And for the same reason. They have lost the middle.