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:
“I went to your link and read your story and endeavored to find the data, as opposed to the .gif files offered.”
Yes James as you’ve noticed they’ve quickly removed the offending gif culprit so you need to click on the blue link in the article titled-
(Click here if CoastWatch link does not work or disappears)
Then you’ll see the 604 degree temp in the lower LH corner they’re talking about as well as top right temps in the 400+ range.
Notice that these offending temps are quite isolated and sporadic and if collated by computer as is likely (they weren’t originally corrected on the gif temp image which indicates that’s most likely) they would impact severely on any average surface temperature derived from them. The further point to note is that when a satellite sensor turns faulty as they claim what does it do? It reads high (and massively so) just as Anthony discovered with the all the useless surface stations.
There’s a global pattern here with lots of half-baked uni grads being turned out of left green unis, that have been spoon fed on computers and computerised stats to believe everything that comes out of them is Gospel, when older, wiser, manual hands know all about garbage in garbage out. It’s like a mate of mine who does payroll for a large Public Service Dept knows only too well. All the current crop of GenX and Yers leave everything to the computer run, whereas he has a feel for the data and skims the printout columns looking for the anomalies and flags them. As he says he can rely on 4 out of 5 of his flagged items coming up trumps with major input errors upon closer inspection of an individual’s pay. The other 1 in 5 is an explainable anomaly. You get someone’s pay wrong and there’s Hell to pay (him not the underlings) whereas with Michigan surface temps? Get the big picture here folks?
I think we’ve really got the blighters worried. The truth is at last getting through. I’m sitting here raising a glass every last one of us.
I guess “climate-cynics” is a step froward from “denier”. Do we owe the media a golf-clap?
So, unlike my Payroll mate no-one could possibly check up on all the anomalous satellite temperature transponder readings going way back but now we know they occur AND read massively high when faulty, so what does that leave? The $64000 question for all the experts gathering and compiling such data and their averages – Show us the computer check codes you used in all your compilations to detect and reject all these anomalous and high satellite temperature readings? Whaddya reckon their answers will be given the Michigan Coastwatch yanked that anomalous temp gif the moment it was drawn to their attention? An educated guess is oops and global oops!!!!
stevengoddard says:
August 11, 2010 at 11:16 pm
“UN sanctions under Clinton killed about one million Iraqi children according to UNICEF. Far fewer civilians died under Bush.”
Good grief!!! One million children??? Thats an awfull lot of tragedies. I had no idea the number was that high.
Actually I didn’t notice all the weasel words(with respect to the yanked but captured surface temp gif) in this so can someone who knows how capture it quick for evidence as this statement might be really BIG-
“NOTICE: Due to degradation of a satellite sensor used by this mapping product, some images have exhibited extreme high and low surface temperatures. Please disregard these images as anomalies. Future images will not include data from the degraded satellite and images caused by the faulty satellite sensor will be/have been removed from the image archive.”
“some images have exhibited extreme high and low surface temperatures” not by my reckoning were there any extreme low temps but in any case their computer check codes would be able to identify all such anomalies presumably. As for degraded satellites what do they have to do with it? The faulty transponders yes but the reject data runs will show exactly whether or not faulty transponders (or degraded satellites) read only high or high and low and by what magnitude of error. These satellite temp experts have some quick explaining to do and my advice to them is remember East Anglia boys and girls and no cover ups or else you’re headed for Dr Jones territory.
Frank: August 11, 2010 at 9:37 pm:
Are we talking about the same W who almost died after choking on a pretzel? The same W who unconstitutionally invaded a sovereign nation? Right.
No, the same W whose completely legal post 9/11 National Security Policy – for example, as legally implemented by the U.S. Congress in the form of the “AUMF in Iraq”, and backed by the U.N. Res. 1441 “serious consequences”, ultimately stemming directly from the Gulf War I Iraqi Surrender Agreements specifically concerning WMD inspections in Iraq – in toto resulted in the Bush Policy’s perfect record in preventing further 9/11-like attacks upon America as compared to the previous “crime not war” based Policy, to which the Obama Administration now apparently more and more wants to return.
Right?
The Sierra Club, like most environmental organizations, are structured like the watermellon: green on the outside, red on the inside!
@ur momisugly JPeden:
J, all correct but –
“A blind man will not thank you for a looking-glass.” Thomas Fuller
Don Penim says:
August 11, 2010 at 9:24 pm
“……like Ulysses was drawn to the sirens”
My British Shothair Blue Cat who rejoices in the name Odysseus would like to point out that it was he who encountered the three sirens on his way home from Troy and consequently considers Ulysses to be a mythological lightweight in comparison. Meeiaow!
By hte way, it costs something like $700,000 *per day* to keep the Greenpeace lights on.
And these huge corporations and ultra-wealthy people ahve jsut the money to make it happen!
Greenpeace is heavily funded by many foundations, among which are the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Bauman Family Foundation, the Blue Moon Fund, the Columbia Foundation, the Compton Foundation, the Minneapolis Foundation, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, the Scherman Foundation, Ted Turner’s Turner Foundation. The organization has also drawn support from numerous celebrities, including singers Sting, Tom Jones, and Elton John, who have sponsored its “save the rainforest” campaigns.
kwik: August 12, 2010 at 10:04 am
Good grief!!! One million children??? Thats an awfull lot of tragedies. I had no idea the number was that high.
That may even be on the low side. Things were pretty grim for the average Iraqis while they lived under sanctions.
Looks like Carl Pope doesn’t know how negative feedbacks or oscillators operate. Regrettable, but i guess 95% of the population don’t. Including Rasmus Benestad from RC who in a recent posting over there posited that positive feedbacks lead to oscillations while negative feedbacks lead to no oscillations. When even the people whose day job is scientist-impersonator can’t get it halfway right, who would blame poor Carl when talking about something he doesn’t know anything about.
Since HuffPo has now corrected the article, will you do the same?
Anthony, my apologies but I invited Carl Pope on your behalf as below.
Carl, my apologies for what may seem to be a slightly belligerent tone to my previous post concerning your statements about the “Our Climate” iphone app, and linking it erroneously to WUWT and Anthony Watts.
However, as several other people have said, I do believe that you should accept the offer made to you by us, on behalf of Anthony Watts, and submit an article to WUWT.
I realise you are or must be an extremely busy person, your position as President of the Sierra Club would guarantee that no doubt, so to help you decide on a topic for your article, may I may the following suggestion.
We keep hearing the claim that there have been “thousands of species extinctions caused by Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming”
As the President of the Sierra Club, I feel that if you were to submit an article detailing just four of those extinctions, as it is never stated animal or plant, just species, perhaps two plants, and two animals (you can have one reptile in there) that have become extinct since the year 2000, solely from the effects of CAGW.
As the CAGW hypothesis is based entirely on the increased level of CO2 in the atmosphere, your article will show that these extinctions can be physically traced to the rise of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Further, your article will provide links or references to all data used to support your article. Computer model results are not data or proof.
I am sure that with the thousands of Sierra Club members help, you will be able to prepare a brief, 1000 – 1500 word article, plus all supporting references within a month from this date.
I await your submission to WUWT.
kwik says:
August 12, 2010 at 10:04 am
“One million children??? Thats an awfull lot of tragedies. I had no idea the number was that high.”
Yeah, and then Madeleine Albright said it was worth it; well, actually, she said 500,000 were worth it, because that was the number she was quoted in the interview. Gore was one of the biggest hawks on Iraq in the Clinton administration (Senator from Likud and all). I always find it amusing and sad when people who are supposedly antiwar think Gore would have been any better than Bush on that score.
^^^ ooops, sorry, it has been withdrawn from the page. damn, and I was so hoping to read his article too
I agree with Evan’s comments above. As an Australian with a detached attitude to US party politics, I am totally sick of efforts like Pope’s attempt to trash-talk Bush Jr to peddle eco-quackery. When I talk about global warming down here, listeners are startled to learn that Bush Jr was doing a better job of reducing CO2 emissions than the EU – that is just empirical fact. Anti-Americanism here has reached pathological proportions, due to the likes of Pope, Moore, Gore, the US MSM, Hollywood, and that false prophet Jim Wallis of the religious left. This self-hating crew give their country a bad name abroad. Australian indulgers in this prejudice have usually never heard of the Marshall Plan. Nor are they aware of the evidence – not conclusive but significant – that Saddam moved his WMDs to Syria before the war. Nor do they realise that Duelfer in his CIA report said that Saddam fully intended to recreate his WMD stockpile as soon as he could, and that this was all too imminent due to the corruption of the oil-for-food scandal. Yes, I’m glad Obama got elected as the first non-white president, I have been a Martin Luther King Jr fan since youth; but the time must come when Obama is judged by the same criteria as Dubya, no more and no less. I expect Dubya like Truman to be treated more kindly by history than by (Green) Popes.
Well many many years ago, I was a member of the Sierra Club; and even went on one of their Hi-Lite trips in the Sierra, and that was most enjoyable.
Then one day I went to a party at the home of some Sierra Club Official (after doing some trail clearing) in Woodside California.
I think that was the biggest pile of Redwood lumber I had ever encountered outside of a lumber yard.
That’s when I severed my connection to the club.
As for confusing Skeptic and Cynic; certainly not here. Yes I quite often am a cynic; darn hard to not be at times; but I am definitely NOT a “skeptic”, re climate. I’m quite certain that the “science” of AGW is quite wrong; which doesn’t mean I don’t think we’ve had warming; just as we now are experiencing cooling; it also doesn’t mean I don’t think humans influence the environment; and it doesn’t mean I deny the Greenhouse effect; specially not when it comes to water vapor; but not even when it comes to CO2 also; and of course Ozone is a thorn in our sides, as we evidently need it to smack down some of the solar UV; yet it also is a GHG and right in the middle of our sacred atmospheric window.
But all that GHG stuff is somewhat irrelevent; as is the 0.1% TSI cyclic change.
IT’S THE WATER !! (in all its three phases)
Thanks, David. Actually, I don’t care that much about Saddam’s WMDs or lack thereof. It was the creeping holocaust that was ongoing in Iraq at the time, and that had noting to do with WMD.
We did eventually dig up c. 500 of the old-style WMD types, FWIW, but I was wild to see Iraq invaded the instant he resumed the massacre of the South Shia and Kurds after Gulf War I. Delaying that invasion to 2003 cost at least a million entirely innocent Iraqi lives. To those who say dubya was “just looking for an excuse” to invade Iraq from the time he was elected, I can only say, “I should damnwell hope so.”
I never needed conservative reasons for invading Iraq. I found the liberal reasons for the invasion to be far more compelling. We enabled the Iraq killing fields by doing nothing. When they were discovered, Tony Blair said, with scathing wisdom, “Doing nothing IS doing something.” Some of the most deadly war crimes are crimes of inaction.
david elder: August 12, 2010 at 4:17 pm
Nor are they aware of the evidence – not conclusive but significant – that Saddam moved his WMDs to Syria before the war.
I was hoping that it wasn’t just me who knew about that. The Iranians scarfed up a few items, too — Quds made an incursion onto Kirkuk Air Base and into two locations east of Baghdad and made off with at least three L-39s being modified into nuke-capable UAVs, and they came in *knowing* what they were looking for, because they brought low-boy trailers with them.
Warren: August 12, 2010 at 2:33 pm
Anthony, my apologies but I invited Carl Pope on your behalf as below.
“However, as several other people have said, I do believe that you should accept the offer made to you by us, on behalf of Anthony Watts, and submit an article to WUWT…We keep hearing the claim that there have been ‘thousands of species extinctions caused by Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming.’
As the President of the Sierra Club, I feel that if you were to submit an article detailing just four of those extinctions, as it is never stated animal or plant, just species, perhaps two plants, and two animals (you can have one reptile in there) that have become extinct since the year 2000, solely from the effects of CAGW.”
I’m not Anthony, nor do I play him on TV, but I think that is an excellent suggestion, Warren. Personally, I’d be satisfied with just a list of the species they *claim* have gone extinct since 2000 solely from the effects of CAGW.
^^ Thanks Bill, unfortunately he keeps deleting the post, 4 times so far I think, I just keep reposting it
another POPE we will all be saved from a firery death