Guest post by Alan Caruba
Full disclosure: Years ago I received a small stipend from The Heartland Institute to help cover the costs of writing articles regarding the global warming hoax, well before it was exposed in 2009 when emails between its perpetrators—the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—revealed the total lack of real science involved. I have continued to expose the hoax without any support from Heartland or any other entity.
A total of six conferences on climate change have been sponsored by The Heartland Institute. I attended the first conference in New York City in 2008 and my initial observation was that virtually no one from the press was there and the meager coverage it received disparaged it.
This week, a major smear campaign against the Institute erupted as the result of an act of deception and thievery that may well result in criminal charges against its as yet unknown perpetrator.
The President of the Institute, Joe Bast, immediately informed its supporters, directors, donors and friends that someone pretending to be a board member had sent Heartland an email claiming to be a director and asking that documents regarding a January board meeting be re-sent.
A clever ruse, but the result was that elements of the confidential documents were then posted on a number of so-called climate blogs and from there to various members of the media who, with the exception of The Guardian, took no steps whatever to verify the authenticity of the documents, some of which Heartland says were either a concoction of lies or altered to convey inaccurate information.
The leading disseminator of the global warming hoax, The New York Times, published its version on Wednesday, February 15th, titled “Leak Offers Glimpse of Campaign Against Climate Science.”
Suffice to say, the “climate science” served up by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been a pack of lies from the day it first convened. Its “science” was based on computer models rigged by co-conspirators that include Michael Mann of Penn State University and Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia.
The original leak of their emails in November 2009 instantly revealed the extent of their efforts to spread the hoax and to suppress any expression of doubt regarding it. A second release in 2011 confirmed what anyone paying any attention already knew.
The “warmists”, a name applied to global warming hoaxers, launched into a paroxysm of denial that has not stopped to this day. Their respective universities have since engaged in every possible way to hide the documentation they claimed supported their claims. Suffice to say, the global warming hoax was the golden goose for everyone who received literally billions in public and private funding.
We have reached the point where the warmists have been claiming that global warming causes global cooling! Along the way the bogus warming has been blamed for thousands of utterly absurd events and trends. What really worried the perpetrators was the fact that the planet had entered a cooling cycle in 1998.
At the heart of the hoax was the claim that carbon dioxide (CO2) was causing the Earth to heat and that CO2 emissions must be reduced to save the Earth. Next to oxygen, CO2 is vital to all life on Earth as it sustains all vegetation which in turn sustains every creature that depends on it as a source of food. It represents a mere 0.033% of the Earth’s atmosphere and is referred to by warmists as a “greenhouse gas.” It is, as any meteorologist or climatologist will tell you, the atmosphere that protects the Earth from becoming a dissociated planet like Mars.
The New York Times article is a case study in bad journalism and bias on a scale for which this failing newspaper is renowned. The Times reported that “Leaked documents suggest that an organization known for attacking climate science is planning a new push to undermine the teaching of global warming in public schools, the latest indication that climate change is becoming part of the nation’s culture wars.”
Wrong, so wrong. Polls have demonstrated that global warming is last on a list of concerns by the public. It barely registers because the public has concluded that it is either a hoax or just not happening. Teaching global warming in the nation’s schools constitutes a crime against the truth and the students.
The Times article makes much of the amounts some donors to Heartland have contributed, but in each cited case, with one exception, the donations had nothing to do with its rebuttal of global warming science.
“It is in fact not a scientific controversy”, said the Times article. “The majority of climate scientists say that emissions generated by human beings are changing the climate and putting the planet at long-term risk, although they are uncertain about the exact magnitude of that risk.”
The exact magnitude is zero. Thousands of scientists have signed petitions denouncing global warming as a hoax. The Times lies.
A post at The Daily Bayonet on February 14th said it well, “What the Heartland documents 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 (World Wildlife Fund), the Sierra Club, the National 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.
The Times will continue to publish lies about global warming, as will others like Time and Newsweek magazines. The attacks on Heartland and the many scientists and others like myself who debunk this fraud will continue, but their efforts are just the dying gasp of the greatest hoax of the modern era.
There’s a reason the theme of Heartland’s sixth conference in 2011 was “Restoring the Scientific Method.” Real science does not depend on declaring “a consensus” before the hypothesis has been thoroughly tested, a process that often involves years of effort. Meanwhile, the planet continues to cool.
David A. Evans said @ur momisugly February 16, 2012 at 11:09 am
The Git’s legal experience extends only to that of fathering a fine son on a legal secretary. Happily, he married SWMBO almost exactly nine months before she bore The Gitling 🙂
Oh, and one of his favourite people to drink with was a criminal barrister.
[Moderator’s Query: the barrister was a criminal? -REP]
Will Nitschke said @ur momisugly February 16, 2012 at 1:02 pm
The history of pronouncements of doom go back to the classical Greeks. It seems likely that pronouncements of doom were being made before it occurred to the Greeks to invent history. I that I share your opinion regarding the head post.
All this “he said – she said” stuff is silly anyway and eventually turns the general population off.
Ask any “climate scientist” to explain why the Moon, heated solely by solar radiation, reaches temperatures twice that recorded on Earth.
They have been so completely brainwashed that they cannot see that the fact the solar radiation alone heats the Moon to ~120 degrees C during the day completely destroys their use of one quarter of the solar constant as evidenced by Kiehl & Trenberth –
“Here we assume a “solar constant” of 1367 W m-2 (Hartmann 1994), and because the incoming solar radiation is one-quarter of this, that is, 342 W m-2, a planetary albedo of 31% is implied.”
If solar insolation is really one quarter of the solar constant why doesn’t this premise apply to the Moon ?
There may be lots of argument about radiative effects on Earth but these do not apply to the Moon.
The simple “Inconvenient Truth” about the MAXIMUM surface temperatures observed on the Moon is that it requires the full “solar constant” reduced by the accepted Moon albedo to explain these temperatures -one quarter simply doesn’t cut it.
If their “one quarter of the solar insolation” thingie is so wrong for the case of the Moon – as is easily demonstrated – why is it right for Earth ?? Are they trying to claim the solar radiation somehow knows to quarter itself and spread all round the globe sneaking in under the cover of darkness ??
In every explanation of the “greenhouse effect” I see the insolation is always quoted as around 170 W/sq m due to the method of trickery using the geometry of an illuminated disk in equilibrium with a sphere- WHAT RUBBISH .
It clearly doesn’t apply to the Moon – no-one cares about averages – the argument is about radiative heating and averages have no place in the discussion – the solar insolation is either on or off – not some average.
The obvious truth is the Sun could cause the surface temperature of the Earth to rise much higher than is observed during the day and therefore the atmosphere acts to actually cool the Earth’s surface – there is no “greenhouse effect”.
There is no justification for reducing solar insolation to one quarter other than to obfuscate and achieve a result they want.
I really do not understand how intelligent people let them get away with this obvious lie – during the day the atmosphere shields us from intense solar radiation and cools the surface by convection and evaporation.
[Moderator’s Query: the barrister was a criminal? -REP]
Possibly, but I doubt it. He defended some pretty dire characters. “Criminal barrister” is how barristers who defend criminals describe themselves in the English speaking world. See:
for an example.
[REPLY: Ahhh! Thank you for the clarification…. and we’ll let the advertisement for your friend slip through this time… -REP]
[SNIP: I did say something about valid e-mail addresses…. -REP]
R. Gates says:
February 16, 2012 at 11:24 am
Here’s an honest question
That’s a cracker lol
It is not about climate.
It is about taxes.
It is about power.
Therefor lies are required.
R. Gates says:
February 16, 2012 at 12:10 pm
Any organizaitons can (and individuals too), and many do, go back and “sanitize” their past, so as to make themselves appear to be something more acceptable to various groups or the public at large.
###
No only lefties do this. Conservatives don’t have to. Fraud is a defining characteristic of all socialists. It has to be because most people would not willingly submit to slavery.
I often see the argument “if the downwelling longwave radiation” doesn’t heat the oceans or surface where does it go ?”
Perhaps it joins with the other 3 quarters of the solar radiation which climate scientists somehow disappear.
I still defy anyone to explain the Moon’s temperature during the day whilst preserving the nonsense that the Sun requires extra power from “greenhouse gases” on Earth to maintain temperatures that never reach even half of the lunar daytime temperature.
Once that nonsense is assigned to the dustbin we can move onto proper climate discussions ’cause the quarter thingie is obviously Clearly Recycled All Purpose.
Johnny McVail says:
February 16, 2012 at 9:56 am
WUWT would do well to distance itself from this kind of empty bluster. It adds nothing to the body of science.
———————————-
I don’t think WUWT needs advice on how to do well. Cheers Anthony and co., all the best.
Suffice to say, the global warming hoax was the golden goose for everyone who received literally billions in public and private funding.”
Never was a truer word spoken. Any atmospheric “greenhouse effect” amounts to a complete violation of the laws of physics and is a travesty of such.
First they realised they had to give up on the concept of warm air acting as a blanket, so then they came up with the conjecture that second-hand “backradiation” would slow the rate of cooling of the surface.
Well, to slow the mean rate of cooling you also have to slow the rate of warming every sunny morning. After all, the same process (whatever it could possibly be) has to add thermal energy both morning and evening.
Now think about it. The Second Law of Thermodynamics has to apply between any two specific points wherever there is matter in the universe. And it applies for radiation just as much as it does for conduction. Can you imagine a long metal rod extending out of a patch of ground into the colder air with a heat flow going from the cooler air back into the warmer surface which is getting warmer and warmer due to the Sun at, say, 11am somewhere? This crazy reverse heat flow dreamed up by you-know-who is the conjecture upon which $ ??? billions are being betted.
It just isn’t physics..
Radiation from a cooler source always includes all the frequencies which a warmer surface is able to emit. So all its waves merely resonate and in effect get scattered back out again without any of its energy being converted to thermal energy – no energy is left behind. But radiation from a warmer source has additional frequencies above those of a cooler target, so these higher frequencies cannot resonate and their energy ends up being converted to thermal energy, as seen when the Sun warms something.
Hence, when analysing what would happen when the atmosphere and surface interact by radiation all the radiation from the cooler atmosphere should be disregarded. Only radiation from hot to cold is converted to thermal energy and this is how and why the Second Law of Thermodynamics works for radiation.
[REPLY: Ahhh! Thank you for the clarification…. and we’ll let the advertisement for your friend slip through this time… -REP]
Not my friend, just the first criminal barrister who came up on a Google search. His face is very familiar though; he is on TV news from time to time when he is defending particularly notorius criminals. He practices in NSW and The Git lives in Tasmania, a far more salubrious place than Sydney.
“A total of six conferences on climate change have been sponsored by The Heartland Institute.”
Fifty years ago, these conferences would have been sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences. In the 21st Century, The Heartland Institute decides to do the Academy’s work.
Alan Caruba’s writing is trenchant, with one minor stumble. At the end of paragraph 11, he wrote that the Earth’s atmosphere prevents it from becoming “a dissociated planet like Mars.” “Dissociated” is almost certainly not the word he intended.
A quick check of the meaning of “dissociated ” gives “to sever the association of (oneself); separate”. In some sense, planets are all dissociated, but that’s probably not the meaning the author was reaching for.
From the context, the author’s intent appears to be realized by replacing “dissociated” with “desiccated” (dried out). Mars is certainly desiccated!
“It is, as any meteorologist or climatologist will tell you, the atmosphere that protects the Earth from becoming a dissociated planet like Mars.”
I have no idea what a dissociated planet is but I do know that Mars is a desiccated planet because it no longer has much water, at least not on its surface.
DesertYote said @ur momisugly February 16, 2012 at 1:33 pm
Give it a rest DesertYote. As an example, Malcolm Fraser, when he was the conservative Prime Minister of Australia, used to claim hotel expenses from the public purse when he was staying at his mother’s home. And never to forget, The Memphis Trousers Affair:
Colonial said @ur momisugly February 16, 2012 at 1:51 pm
Here’s an example of Caruba’s “trenchant” writing:
Clearly, he has never read any of the IPCC Assessment reports. Off the top of my head, they include what Caruba calls “a pack of lies” from co-conspirators like Chris Landsea, Richard Lindzen and Roger Pielke Sr. Methinks he’s a paranoid fantasist. Not a good look.
> Its “science” was based on computer models rigged by co-conspirators that include Michael Mann
This is all a joke, yes? Try to get your story straight. I know you hate Mann, and I know you hate models, but Mann does Palaeo, not GCMs.
Well, at least they’re consistent. The warmists believe in falsehoods all the time.
@Vukcevic: Now the end of big struggle is near…. No dear Vuk, it is far from over: Now they call it “Sustainability”, and their next “Jamboree” will be held in june at Rio de Janeiro. I hope it will fall snow on Copacabana beach, as lately happens during those “jet set” gatherings.
http://www.earthsummit2012.org/
> We have reached the point where the warmists have been claiming that global warming causes global cooling!
No we haven’t. You made that up.
> Al Gore spent $300 million advertising
Doesn’t sound very plausible. Has no source. Do you fact-check any of this stuff?
> Real science … Meanwhile, the planet continues to cool
No, the planet continues to warm; e.g. http://tamino.wordpress.com/2012/01/21/2011-temperature-roundup/
Doug Cotton says:
February 16, 2012 at 1:38 pm
It just isn’t physics..”
Yes, it is. But, explaining it to you has been like explaining the Monty Hall Problem to those not conversant in probability and statistics. They are just sure the odds are 50/50, and they think by repeating it over and over, they will sway me to their side.
Pompous Git, Malcolm Fraser is no conservative. He just pretended to be one while he got to be Prime Minister.
William M. Connolley says:
February 16, 2012 at 2:30 pm
“No we haven’t. You made that up.”
Yes, we have.
“Has no source.”
Source.
“No, the planet continues to warm…”
No, it continues to cool.
You know, you could look this stuff up yourself using a “search engine”.
Someone mentioned science should distance itself from empty bluster the only problem is bluster is also part of the global warming campaign to discredit opposition. Ignoring what is being called empty bluster is accepting the benefits of a punching bag.
Among the most disturbing is the global warming crowd in the schools teaching children to believe in a fraud, the billions spent internationally in lock step, scientist supporting global warming fraud and profiting and the MSM ignoring their self-proclaimed mission and the evidence of the fraud while attempting to discredit opposition. All of this by the global warming crowd to bring life changing loss of freedom and wealth to the general population while consolidating limitless power for themselves.
WUWT is about science and climate presenting the truth through facts but what good is science if it is wrapped in a punching bag with no response to abuse.