Today at Huffington Post, a prominent soldier in the environmental movement wrote:
I was stunned by the industry’s shamelessness — and then chagrined at my own gullibility.
It seems the iPhone app “Our Climate” has caught the attention of the chairman of the Sierra Club, Carl Pope.
That quote above is from when he got suckered by an April 1st spoof app supposedly released by the coal industry (made up by another Sierra Club leader as a joke). As is typical for people that write with an agenda to discredit, he doesn’t examine any of the facts surrounding the topic or the application itself. Predictably, he’s used a collection of weasel words. Pope writes in the Huffington Post:
But truth, it seems, does imitate fiction, with only a few month’s lag time. For this week a prominent climate-cynics site, Watt’s Up With That, released a climate-misinformation iPhone app that contains far more damaging Orwellian language than the Sierra Club’s coal industry spoof. The app, called Our Climate, does indeed treat global warming as, perhaps, just the result of natural atmospheric rhythms. But then again, maybe the globe isn’t warming at all. Indeed, Our Climate is, in its own words, a “bite-sized” guide to how climate cynics argue — and as a result rarely have so many contradictions been encompassed in so little space: Climate is highly variable on its own, so people can’t be causing it to change . Then again, climate has self-correcting feedback mechanisms, so it can’t change, regardless.
But there is one consistent theme to all of the material contained on the Our Climate” app (and on its parent WUWT site). Taken in isolation, each bit of data is designed to send your brain the message, “There’s nothing to worry about (and no reason to stop burning coal and oil).”
Here’s the funny part. The app isn’t mine, I didn’t write it, and I make nothing from it. I only wrote about it a couple of times, as did many other skeptic blogs. Yet the Sierra Club chairman Pope gives WUWT all the credit for it, saying:
For this week a prominent climate-cynics site, Watt’s Up With That, released a climate-misinformation iPhone app
In fact, it was written in Australia, by Aeris Systems which is connected to WUWT only by the fact that they asked me to review it and post the press release.
Even though Pope links to the iTunes page for the app, which has no mention of WUWT, and that page links to the ourclimate.info website, where again there’s no mention of WUWT, he seems to have missed this basic bit of research on ownership. Oh but it doesn’t stop there. Pope also links to the Guardian smackdown by the other climate app developer, John Cook:
And, guess what? WUWT isn’t mentioned in that article either, neither am I. It’s pretty embarrassing when the chairman of the Sierra Club can’t take a couple of minutes to read the content in the links he cites. I have no idea how he came to the false conclusion that the app is mine.
Kids, this is what happens when you don’t do your homework. Will Pope fix it over at HuffPo? Doubtful – the Sierra Club traditionally doesn’t let facts get in the way of a good rant.
Looks like Sierra Club chairman Carl Pope may have been writing an autobiography with this book title:
Carl Pope will probably get more traffic to his webpage than he ever imagined in his wildest dreams. Piece also posted here:
Pope’s Sierra Club blog
yeah and i used to support and work with these people.
“environmentalism” has been completely hijacked by the global warming industry…you can almost forgive the average joe for being duped, but guys like carl pope know better. they are in it only for the money.
meanwhile real environmental and health issues go completely ignored.
what a travesty.
Looking at that book cover, I realized just how much I miss Dubya.
You’re obviously under quite a few people’s skin, Anthony. No doubt because the debates you host threaten their wallets.
To be fair I, as a regular reader of your site and a supporter, also had the impression that the iPhone app was yours. Okay, true, I wasn’t writing a critical (or friendly) article about it and so didn’t look at that assumption closely, but I’m not surprised that Poop — sorry, Pope (wait, that’s just as bad) — got that impression. I don’t recall Aeris Systems being mentioned. Perhaps they were, but the overall impression to me was that the app was a Wattsupwithtaht thang.
Even so: Keep up the excellent work.
WUWT must be becoming a burr in the enviro wackos backsides.
Next thing they’ll be doing is claiming the Pielke & Curry are lackeys of big coal and big oil.
Arriana and her post, can kindly go stuff it!
And to think I used to like her before she got all whacked out.
😉
Chris
[snip – badly off color]
Sierra Club, SIERRA CLUB? I’ve heard that name somewhere before.
Oh yes, that’s right! In the mid 1980’s they had their Colorado Lodge CLOSED DOWN by the Colorado health department.
Why? Because they had delayed to the point of “obviously we don’t intend to do this”, putting in a proper sewage treatment system for the lodge.
Then there is the local case (Minnesota) where they “cleared” a road to their facility in the Boundary Waters Canoe area. Fine idea, but the National Forest Service had a little problem with it, as there WAS NO PERMIT FILED, and no permission granted. (That one was handled in a COMPLETELY POLITICAL MANNER, with them being given a “pass”…after all, they are ENVIROMENTALISTS and they can DO NO WRONG…!)
Ah yes, you Sierra Club at work! Making sure the Sierra’s are befouled, and the wilderness destroyed, in order to save it.
Well, obviously Pope lives by his book which should have been titled “Applied Ignorance”.
But then again, maybe the globe isn’t warming at all.
It isn’t. It’s been cooling since 1998. Also, if we go back 1000 years it was warmer on earth than now.
Anyone else notice that in the last couple of monthes we have went from stupid to worse? All the science studies, all the political talking heads, and all the “king’s men” are going completely bonkers…
Its like they do not even try to sound smart. I was talking to the lady at the gas station….she was talking about how she never knew how bad it was until a couple of monthes ago….this might be just one example, but this entire cult is starting to go off the deep end.
Are they really fooling anyone besides themselves?
Didn’t Anthony refer to the app as “our app” within the past two days? (Or was that someone else?)
These guys can’t be bothered to take the time to check out the facts of a simple 99cent iPhone app….
…..We, nay, the world should take stock in what they have to say about something as complex and important as the science behind climate????
Carl Pope takes ignorance to new heights. He also ignores Nova’s rebuttal to Cook, here:
http://joannenova.com.au/2010/08/skeptics-iphone-app-endorsed-de-facto-by-critic/
You can rattle these guys without even trying hard, Anthony ; just the mention of your website puts the wind up them ! Keep up the great work.
And another thing. Mr. Pope must be experiencing some confusion between the terms skeptic and cynic. Now I won’t speak for everyone else visiting this site, but color me skeptical. I’m healthy enough that I can detect an occasional cynical twinge on one of my rare bad days and keep that well reigned in. Perhaps if the enviro crowd would start to reign in their own cynicism, they might start to see the true nature of the climate.
Nah …
“peterhodges says:
August 11, 2010 at 7:11 pm
yeah and i used to support and work with these people.
“environmentalism” has been completely hijacked by the global warming industry…you can almost forgive the average joe for being duped, but guys like carl pope know better. they are in it only for the money.
meanwhile real environmental and health issues go completely ignored.
what a travesty.”
I couldn’t have said it any clearer or better. May Carl Pope and the Sierra Club rot …….Anthony, I hope you as the burr, of the scientific method and open and truthful discussions, in the “backsides of the enviromental wackos” drive them crazy. Of course, they already are in that category –crazy — without any help from you. Thanks for setting them off.
Funny, when the Sierra Club attributes the app to Anthony, it probably boosts sales. Anthony should get a percentage, maybe?
Looking at that book cover, I realized just how much I miss Dubya.
God, do I miss dubya.
As an ardent liberal, I deeply admire and respect dubya, moreso than any president this century other than Reagan. Mark my words, dubya is an analog of Truman, who was less popular than dubya when he left office, yet is now one of our most respected presidents. Dubya not only upheld the genuine liberal ideal (as opposed to the phony-baloney radicalism currently masquerading as a pathetic parody of liberalism), but he was the most honest president of my lifetime (including Ford and Reagan). Like Ford, he embodied that rare combination of intelligence and common sense (and was therefore put down as unintelligent, usually by folks with half his brains and not one iota of his understanding). And he was twice the man his father was.
It kills me to see him assailed from both left and right. But history is with him; make no mistake about that.
It’s funny to see folks talking about the money in “global warming” when it seems their is just as much to be made on the “denier” side of the aisle.
According to Pope, der grosse General von Watts lit the match that made BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling platform one with Nineveh and Tyre. Don’t believe Sancta Sierra-icus? But Pope himself has counted the defunct turtle eggs, if by “turtles” you mean Green Gang sycophants and by “eggs” you mean climate hysterics’ Goebbelian resort to iterating a Big Lie. The Pope Club’s virtual iPhone App for that bleats and squeaks at passersby from every newsstand.
remember ICE bought the Chicago Climate Exchange, the European Climate Exchange and the Chicago Climate Futures Exchange for $600 million earlier this year? well, it seems like the party is over and there’s a good ice hacking quote to boot:
11 Aug: Reuters: Michael Szabo: ICE cuts staff at Chicago Climate Exchange-sources
ICE to cut around half of 50-person CCX workforce
* 1st round of layoffs began July 23, more to come in autumn
* Sources cite U.S. climate inaction as main reason for cuts
* ICE collecting feedback on what to do with climate bourse
“ICE just came in one day and started hacking away … We were told the company was restructuring,” said one source, who declined to be named…
http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKLDE6791WI20100811
Now we are allegedly ‘climate cynics’?
This from an organization that shamelessly shakes down industries for hand outs even as they condemn them, corrupts the IPCC, positions its insiders to make billions trading worthless carbon credits, and poses as some holier-than-thou organization of good guys?
If Carl Pope wants to see a climate cynic, he only has to look in the mirror. Or if that disgusts him too much, he can just look at his board of directors.
Benjamin P. says:
August 11, 2010 at 8:16 pm
“It’s funny to see folks talking about the money in “global warming” when it seems their is just as much to be made on the “denier” side of the aisle.”
I wasn’t aware there was a ‘denier’ side. I’m know there is a skeptical point of view. I’m not sure about the money side either. You see any grant money coming this way? What money? If those people who developed the app are making any money, it pales in comparison to just the money given to the GISS alone, much less including the grants and other govt. agencies that hyperventilate with alarmism. We haven’t even touched on Pachy and Gore’s windfalls.
I used to belong and to the Audubon Society. quit when it started getting worse and worse, back in the 80’s any dissent was not allowed. Conservation is now confiscation.
Except for the elites that run big green..
Love this, Anthony you are in their Gourds like Sarah Palin is in the Democrat
party’s …
No I’m not a huge fan of Sarah’s but love the way she keeps them thinking about her.
Like Anthony probably is on Pope’s mind every time he looks at the sky, goes to the
bathroom, goes to bed..
hehehe…