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:
Letter to the editor by Ray McHugh.
Suzuki Parody
http://www.owensoundsuntimes.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=3488512
Pointman’s “chewing at the ankles”
‘You have to put yourself in their place to understand their inner turmoil. They are believers. They have been brought up in the faith. They learned about the threat of the evil deniers, paid by evil corporations to spread lies and deceptions – mostly to stupid, gullible people, or to other wicked people. That’s simple and clear enough, and would have been reinforced all but daily in the media, and within their circles of chosen ones. Imagine their horror then to come across a professor in a university delivering an entire lecture course which undermined the Revelations of Gore and the Holy Insights of Hansen. Surely, of all sheltered, solidly socialist places, a university should be a safe haven from such non-conformist views? You can see they would be upset and puzzled.
Four junior priests of the faith took it upon themselves to study videos of the offending lectures, and then put together a 96 page document to capture the horror of them, and add some attempts of their own to refute the heresies. Hearing of this report, the missionary agreed to do a telephone interview with the heretic himself, and thereby no doubt display both her courage and willingness to deal with such people in the name of the cause. Perhaps she might show him the error of his ways, or at the very least publicise more awfulness to bring shivers of horror to her own small band of followers. But, goshdarnit, it turned out that the heretic was polite and rational and well-informed and not at all obviously unhinged or evil.’
More of that here: http://climatelessons.blogspot.com/2012/03/church-of-co2-alarm-tenets-challenged.html
This is a bit circular, since I reference and quote the above post here on WUWT.
Al Gored says:
March 3, 2012 at 12:43 pm
On the very bright side, that video clip is from a brand new Canadian TV network, Sun News, which provides a Fox-like alternative to the other networks there (the CBC and CTV are both as deep or deeper into the AGW propaganda as the BBC is).
Without that network this side of this story would NEVER have been covered in Canada. And that network has already provided no end of inconvenient coverage of not only the AGW scam but also the inconvenient sources of funds that prop up the usual Canadian ‘environmental’ groups… which are now coming under serious scrutiny. No wonder Desmogblog was so eager to pounce on Fakegate. With their cash flow threatened they are starting to panic.
I think and hope that is a major part of it. We have little funding to lose. They have billions–and it is vulnerable. We need to run a LOT of follow-the-money stories on skeptic blogs.
I keep telling you to look at USA’s NSF requests-for-proposals. Likewise other countries.’
That and find out the reality that CO2 is utterly vital to human physiology, not just plants. There is an optimum concentration. And the optimum atmospheric concentration is at least double today’s and almost certainly 10 times to 200 times higher.
Goldberg is a piece of shoescrape.
@Pompous
“After the low mark for the first essay, he decided to write complete and utter bullshit for the second.”
Carleton has good engineering and architecture departments. But the social sciences always seen (to me) to follow a sort of serial monotheism with a new god every few years. Ottawa U (which we called The Zoo) is more in LaLaLand than Carelton. I don’t completely agree with the analysis that all things nutty are Leftist plots. We can’t attribute to conspiracy what can also be explained by stupidity, ignorance or both.
I agree that there is no time for anything other than cramming when taking engineering but we dinosaurs (1970) were also required to take a non-engineering elective. I have always been glad that I took “Argument and Reason’ because it taught me how to examine the structure of an argument based on premises and the possiblity that the premises were incorrect. As much AGW ‘argument’ (which is the right word) is based on faulty, false or weak premises, it follows that the conclusions are going to be wrong more than they are right.
The tactic taken by a losing side is often to divert attention from the weaker points of their argument and supplicate emotional responses tied to the better or more believable points. Alone, that is an indicator of impending doom for the debater. That such desperate actions are now employed points to the internal realisation there is something Deeply Wrong with the initial stance. Expect the number of strong supporters to decline and those remaining to be come more hysterical as reality bites deeper.
Eric Adler, quite a few AGW believers post on this site. Some post quite cogent arguments. But the type of person who would try to defend MS Goldman’s article would never sully their cranium with WUWT, that would be akin to committing blasphemy.
That anti-logic scribe at The G won’t stop her gutter tactics until someone sues her.
Always check the History at the bottom of her articles; I haven’t seen a single one related to Heartland that hasn’t been edited after publication.
e.g.
Heartland associate taught ‘biased’ climate course at Ottawa university
This article was published on guardian.co.uk at 22.55 GMT on Tuesday 28 February 2012. It was last modified at 14.55 GMT on Thursday 1 March 2012
The Pompous Git says:
March 3, 2012 at 11:46 am
When I was a student in mining engineering, the students in our department numbered about the same as the sociology department. However, there were only 3 professors for Mining and 27 for Sociology. We called the Sociology Dept the “do nothing end of campus” for obvious reasons. Many of the sociology graduates could only find work teaching–you guessed it–sociology. Unfortunately, those on the AGWCF side teach their brood to perpetuate their saem “take” on “climate change”–any independently thinking person wouldn’t be so easily brainwashed.
How sad.
This controversy led to me read the report, rather than rely on the media reporting. The main point made by the CASS report, is that this survey course teaches conclusions based on so called skeptical web sites, such as Heartland and the ICSC, with no reference to the conclusions of the IPCC, and the scientific literature that supports AGW. It therefore presents a misleading picture of the state of climate science to non science majors. In addition, the report points out, that many of the points made by the course are based on papers that have been thoroughly refuted in the scientific literature. Both Paterson, who originally taught and developed the course, and Harris, are associated with a number of organizations who don’t accept AGW,
Meanwhile the courses in Climate Science for science majors at Carelton University, which are more rigorous, teach the mainstream climate science as accepted by the major professional scientific organizations.
There is something that smells bad there to say the least.
REPLY: yes, its the fact that the report bypassed any complaint process to Carleton, and went straight to media. That sure does smell doesn’t it? – Anthony
Berényi Péter says:
March 3, 2012 at 2:39 pm
“I thought university students were supposed to be adults, perfectly able to decide for themselves what course to take (or what kind of government to elect, for that matter). What is more, they are educated ones, who can read and understand scientific literature, so anyone who would try to deceive them in this respect, could easily find himself in a pretty difficult situation.
Have some journalists actually gone out of their mind to the extent questioning academic freedom?”
The point made by the writers of the CASS report, is that this course was for non science majors. It gave only the skeptic side of the story, which seemed to echo the ICSC web site, and did not
provide a balanced list of scientific or popular science literature for the students to consult.
That practice is not defensable in the name of scientic freedom. It is clearly abuse of power.
If the students had the expertise to do this on their own, they wouldn’t need the course. .
REPLY: Sometimes I think you, like the Shawshank warden, are just being obtuse: “It gave only the skeptic side of the story,” Mr. Harris just said otherwise, why not simply call him a liar right now and get it out of your system? -Anthony
Eric Adler says:
March 3, 2012 at 6:33 pm
… In addition, the report points out, that many of the points made by the course are based on papers that have been thoroughly refuted in the scientific literature. Both Paterson, who originally taught and developed the course, and Harris, are associated with a number of organizations who don’t accept AGW,
Meanwhile the courses in Climate Science for science majors at Carelton University, which are more rigorous, teach the mainstream climate science as accepted by the major professional scientific organizations.
Yeppers. You’ve proved that the bought-and-paid-for “mainstream science departments” are putting out bunkum and fraud and crude stereotypes as their religious-level dogma, rather than proper analysis and critical thinking of the measured results.
What of waste of (taxpayer) time and money in those so-called “science” divisions. But at least some of the Carleton students are learning to think. In the other class 8<)
The report makes many erroneous claims of error. A simple example is Claim 24, where professor Harris notes that apparent sea level is the result of both change inland level and in sea level, and gives the example …”in Halifax, the sea level rise that they’re seeing is half because of sea level rise and half because the land is falling.‛”
To prove this claim false the report says that since 1920 the land in Halifax has been subsiding at about 16cm per century while the sea has been rising about 16cm per century. To me this is pretty substantive confirmation of the statement they are labeling as erroneous.
The authors of the attack on Prof. Harris appear to be so blinded by their ideology that that cannot see the truth when they themselves write it.
In many other cases the strawman method of argument is used, where the report authors rebut something other than what Tom Harris said.
I predict that the rebuttal will be devastating.
Yeah? There’s climate skepticism in my classroom too. You know why? Because I teach SCIENCE, not pseudo science. And you know what else? Academic freedom, baby. I can teach what I want as long as they score well on STAR.
Yeah.
Since the host of this blog was the driving force behind the SurfaceStation.org project this supposedly false claim and the associated commentary might be of interest:
“Claim 15. ‚Current resurvey of 1221 US Historical Climatological Network found 70% of stations severely compromised. Only 4% at proper standards.‛
RESPONSE: Some existing climatological network stations do need to be brought in line with current standards. However, NOAA is aware of these kinds of problems and responded by comparing the best 70 stations with the full 1218 station dataset, and found almost identical trends [24]. A recent, comprehensive, analysis of station quality further indicated that station quality did not alter the warming trends in temperature data [25].”
As with many of the alleged errors listed in the report, the original statement is accurate and factual.
Eric Adler says: “The point made by the writers of the CASS report, is that this course was for non science majors.”
No, this is wrong. As explained in the original article, the course is for non-Earth Science majors (although some actually sat in out of interest). Many science students–physics, chemistry, biology and of course environmental sciences–not to mention environmental studies and all branches of engineering have taken the course, literally hundreds of the 1,500 students who took ERTH2402 when I taught it.
I got an e-mail yesterday from one of the students in environmental studies who just told me that many students who took my course are in her class and they are very angry about the attacks on the course. They know that I covered both sides of the science (how could one ignore something everyone knows about?), even showing excerpts of UNEP and Greenpeace videos (which we then critiqued). They also know I gave them plenty of science references, far more than they wanted, I am sure. They also know that I dealt with any and all objections prompted and effectively, sharing any needed clarifications and corrections with the class right away.
Eric Adler has been black listed from my e-mail account since he sent a nasty e-mail speaking about us as deniers, etc. That sort of ad hominem logical fallacy simply poisons the debate and is not constructive to the development of rational environmental policy formulation. My students recognize logical fallacies in the debate when they see them, whichever side the attacks are coming from.
Tom Harris
Instructor – ERTH2402 2009, 2010, s011
Executive Director – ICSC
REPLY: Mr. Adler has been previously banned from WUWT for such similar behavior. He’s a well known troll with poor manners. I had hoped he’d changed, I see now that the has not and it is was a mistake on my part to think he would. – Anthony
Another mistake by Adler: “Patterson and Harris are both part of the International Climate Science Coalition”. I already explained to Adler in my answer to the one e-mail that got through before I blocked him that Professor Patterson has not been part of the ICSC since January 2011. Interesting that Adler did not correct this mistake in the above posting.
Looks like desperation, several have commented earlier. Fanatic frenetic dogmatic oblivious to facts desperation, it looks to me like the warmista journalists are irrationally searching for their own personal fraudulent swords to fall upon in imitation of their hero.
A term need to be coined to describe these amazing acts of idiocy (and examples of really bad journalism), perhaps Gleicked? Gleickism would describe this definitive unsavory unscientific climatic belief system and Gleickerites would describe the mindless chanting followers whose only desire is to glorify those who ruin science and to terrify the legitimate teachers and people of science.
Tom Harris says:
March 3, 2012 at 7:33 pm
“Another mistake by Adler: “Patterson and Harris are both part of the International Climate Science Coalition”. I already explained to Adler in my answer to the one e-mail that got through before I blocked him that Professor Patterson has not been part of the ICSC since January 2011. Interesting that Adler did not correct this mistake in the above posting.”
A distinction that makes no difference to the argument, unless Patterson left because of profound disagreement with the position of the ICSC on climate change.
dogparliament
Thanks for the link to the list of ECOSOC NGOs
a 2011 version is at: http://www.un.org/esa/coordination/ngo/pdf/INF_List.pdf
and a sorted text file is now at: http://tome22.info/General/UN-Consultatives-2011-V2s.txt
There is more detail on 20 of them on http://tome22.info/ but not yet accessible by the EcoSoc status
The 20 are:
AAAS-American Association for the Advancement of Science
CI-Climate Institute
CIEL-Center for International Environmental Law
COM-Club of Madrid
EI-European Institute
GCI-Green Cross International
GLOBE-GLOBE International
ICC-International Chamber of Commerce
IIED-International Institute for Environment and Development
IISD-International Institute for Sustainable Development
NRDC-Natural Resources Defense Council
RFF-Resources for the Future
SEI-Stockholm Environment Institute
Sierra Club
UNF-United Nations Foundation
WBCFSD-World Business Council for Sustainable Development
WEF-World Economic Forum
WRI-World Resources Institute
Woods Hole Research Center
WorldWatch Institute
Charlie A says:
March 3, 2012 at 6:58 pm
“The report makes many erroneous claims of error. A simple example is Claim 24, where professor Harris notes that apparent sea level is the result of both change inland level and in sea level, and gives the example …”in Halifax, the sea level rise that they’re seeing is half because of sea level rise and half because the land is falling.‛”
To prove this claim false the report says that since 1920 the land in Halifax has been subsiding at about 16cm per century while the sea has been rising about 16cm per century. To me this is pretty substantive confirmation of the statement they are labeling as erroneous.”
I am pleased that you bring up specific criticisms of the report. This is the ground that really should be explored in this thread.
You don’t quote the part of the statement that the report believes is misleading.
“‚What you think is sea level rise might not in fact be sea level rise at all. It might in fact be ground level drop. In fact, in Halifax, the sea level rise that they’re seeing is half because of sea level rise and half because the land is falling.‛ ”
The intent of Harris’ statement intent is to cast doubt on data that shows rise in sea level, by implying that the data used by scientists might mistake ground level drop for sea level rise, with Halifax used as an example. The CASS report points out that this implication is incorrect:
“In general, subsidence is taken into consideration where it is present, and we have good evidence of sea level rise at tectonically stable sites [36]…..”
That means the Halifax data that Harris cites, does not indicate that scientists are confused between sea level rise, and ground level drop.
Tom Harris says:
March 3, 2012 at 7:25 pm
“I got an e-mail yesterday from one of the students in environmental studies who just told me that many students who took my course are in her class and they are very angry about the attacks on the course ……”
Do you have a reading list posted for your course on the internet?
Does Carlton have a file of course evaluation comments we can look at?
Eric Adler says: March 3, 2012 at 1:24 pm
… So it not surprising that the Patterson and Harris have almost identical course content. This is not a valid argument that the curriculum is legitimate science.
Dear Mr. Adled,
“It not surprising that the Patterson and Harris have almost identical course content” because they are both teaching the same FACTS. These FACTS have not changed is decades, unlike the constantly changing fictions of the IPCC and acolytes of the global warming “Cause”.
I just want to clear up something. I think there’s some confusion between The Skeptical Inquirer and Skeptic Magazine. The Center for Inquiry mentioned above publishes The Skeptical Inquirer (SI). That periodical began publication in 1976 as The Zetetic. It changed its name to The Skeptical Inquirer after a couple of years. I was a charter subscriber to The Zetetic/SI and continued my subscription for more than three decades to that once outstanding magazine. I reluctantly cancelled my subscription a few years ago when it became the Unskeptical Regurgitator of alarmist CAGW junk science. I couldn’t take it.
Skeptic Magazine, first published in 1992, is an unrelated but similar periodical to which I never subscribed. That is where the above linked article is from (or its website). It appears that magazine too has gone bad. It’s all very sad.
Allan MacRae says:
March 3, 2012 at 8:35 pm
Dear Mr. Adled,
“It not surprising that the Patterson and Harris have almost identical course content” because they are both teaching the same FACTS. These FACTS have not changed is decades, unlike the constantly changing fictions of the IPCC and acolytes of the global warming “Cause”.
Your use of insults shows that you don’t have a valid argument.
Your claim that FACTS involving climate change have not changed in decades is clearly false. One important example is the rapid acceleration of the loss of Arctic Sea Ice since 1979 Another as well as the change from decreasing to increasing global temperatures during that time.
Eric Adler says:
March 3, 2012 at 8:49 pm
Must have changed the definition of acceleration too. Who pays you to come up with this nonsense, Mr. Addled?