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.
=============================================================
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.
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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.
@ur momisugly 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.