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:
@Eric Adler at 8:22PM You say “You don’t quote the part of the statement that the report believes is misleading.”
Unlike you and the report authors, I cannot read minds. I see nothing to support your claim that “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:”
Both you and the CASS report authors are truly contortionists if you manage to infer that intent from Harris’s statement “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.‛ ”
Emphasis on YOU added. You, in this context clearly means his student audience, not climate scientists calculating sea levels.
Eric, it amazes me at how hard you stretch to distort relatively simple, straightforward language. Were you involved in drafting or reviewing the CASS report?
Crispin in Johannesburg said @ur momisugly March 3, 2012 at 5:31 pm
Dunno about you, but the Git found the Logic class at UTas the most difficult class he ever took, but also the most rewarding. We had quite a few computer science and mathematics students as well as philosophy. It’s a required unit for Philosophy of Science. And yes, it is sufficient to understand logic to realise that much CAGW argument is in error as The Good Lord Monckton so frequently demonstrates.
That Carleton university course flap reminds me of the ACLU which can be relied on to be on the wrong side of every issue.
The authors of the 142 point critique were:
Dr Christopher Hassall, Ms Carley Centen, Dr Cliff Beninger, and Dr Chris Hebbern
I went through the first 50 of their “points” before I realized that these learned fools are completely clueless. Whatever makes sense from a scientific perspective, these guys are against it.
The
hatchet-jobreport was authored by aPR HackCommunications Specialist and several Biologists?As Gomer Pyle would have said, “Surprise, surprise, surprise!”
I’ve known a few pretty scientific Biologists, but as a group they’re as addle-pated as most of the other ” . . ologies.”
movielib says:
March 3, 2012 at 8:37 pm,
Re: Skeptical Inquirer:
Wow – 30 years? I subscribed for a few years in the late ’70s, mid-’80s, and a year in the late ’90s, but by then I’d gotten bored – seemed that all they did was debunk ghost stories, expose psuedo-medical frauds (both worthwhile, but tiresome after awhile), and commiserate among themselves about The Burden of Skepticism.
Sometime after I was skepticised by Mcintyre & McKitrick, and Crichton, around 2005, I picked up a copy at a downtown bookstore to read on the train. Shock. Same old ghost stories, but now with fawning admiration for and unapologetic kow-towing to the Climate Cabal. I think it was the AGU that had recently released a position statement; they had a copy of it, complete with a picture of the current AGU president. Total, unblushing acceptance of Argumentum ex Auctoritate As I recall, that was the sum total of SI’s argument.
In 50 years, maybe less, historians of science — which discipline we hope by then will have regained some of its pre-Oreskesian rigor — will write wonderingly of how the “exact” sciences squandered their credibility, so painstakingly accumulated over the previous 400 years, in a single generation.
Eric Adler says: March 3, 2012 at 8:49 pm
Allan MacRae says: March 3, 2012 at 8:35 pm
Note correction of 2 typos; my apologies. My comments in CAPS below.
MacRae:
Dear Mr. Adler,
“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 in decades, unlike the constantly changing fictions of the IPCC and acolytes of the global warming “Cause”.
Adler / MACRAE:
Your use of insults shows that you don’t have a valid argument. WHAT INSULTS, MR. ADLER?
Your claim that FACTS involving climate change have not changed in decades is clearly false. I WAS REFERRING TO THE SCIENCE, MR. ADLER, OBVIOUSLY NOT VARIABLES SUCH AS GLOBAL TEMPERATURE – CLIMATE HAS ALWAYS CHANGED. THE WARMISTS’ POSITION ON THE SCIENCE KEEPS SHIFTING, GETTING CLOSER AND CLOSER TO THE SKEPTICS POSITION AS THE WARMISTS’ ALLEGED STRONG POSITIVE FEEDBACKS TO CO2 DECLINE AGAIN AND AGAIN. BTW, THERE ARE NO STRONG POSITIVE FEEDBACKS – THERE NEVER WERE. THAT CLAIM WAS JUST ONE COMPONENT OF CAGW BS.
One important example is the rapid acceleration of the loss of Arctic Sea Ice since 1979. OF COURSE THERE HAS BEEN SOME WARMING SINCE 1979 AND SOME LOSS OF SEA ICE. WE KNOW THAT BECAUSE THE WEATHER SATELLITES WERE LAUNCHED IN 1979. HOWEVER, AS SHOWN BY NEWER SATELLITE DATA, SEA ICE HAS BEEN RELATIVELY STABLE SINCE AT LEAST 2005. http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plots/icecover/icecover_current.png
Another as well as the change from decreasing to increasing global temperatures during that time.
FALSE – THERE HAS BEEN NO GLOBAL WARMING IN THE LAST DECADE OR SO, AND SOME SLIGHT COOLING, DESPITE SIGNIFICANT INCREASES IN CO2. http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/
DO YOU NOT SEE THIS AS A PROBLEM FOR THE CAGW HYPOTHESIS? I CERTAINLY DO.
YOUR CAGW HYPOTHESIS IS ABOUT TO BE FALSIFIED, OR ALREADY IS. WHY DO YOU THINK THE WARMIST TERM “GLOBAL WARMING “ IS NOW CALLED “CLIMATE CHANGE” – BECAUSE THERE HAS BEEN NO GLOBAL WARMING FOR A DECADE OR SO.
WILL GLOBAL WARMISTS REPAY THE TRILLION DOLLARS IN SCARCE GLOBAL RESOURCES SQUANDERED DUE TO GLOBAL WARMING FRAUD? WILL THEY EVEN APOLOGIZE FOR ALL THEIR BLATANT FALSEHOODS? I THOUGHT NOT.
GOOD DAY MR. ADLER.
When warmists attack my mental image is always the last scene in ‘Invasion of the bodysnatchers’ when Donald Sutherland points at the unconverted and squeals like a pig!
Maybe I missed the reference but Carleton University is in Ottawa, capital of Canada.
The CASS audit is an attempt to enforce ideological conformity. Lysenkoism at its best.
Environmental correspondents, if not eco-activists themselves, will move in those circles in probably both a professional and social way. Even if they were inclined to give objective reporting it would be a major step as it would most likely lead to complete ostracisation, as as happened to others who stopped propagandising on the quasi-science of AGW.
As measures to ‘counter’ AGW have such a negative impact on so many peoples lives I regard them as enemies of humanity.
A man with a mission, obviously:
http://katatrepsis.wordpress.com/2012/01/31/carleton-university-is-being-too-honest
Wow!
Thank You So Much for bringing this !
I used to read The Guardian. What am I going to have to read now?.
I have read the Guardian paper, but I also have listened to the phone conversation between Goldberg and Harris. And I am amazed at the changes, the omissions etc in the paper which was supposed to be based on the phone conversation.
But even more than that, I am really upset at the rudeness of the woman “journalist”, who kept interrupting, going back to questions that had already been answered by Professor Harris, doubting the truth of what he said…
And the Guardian does not seem to have listened at all to what Harris was saying ; namely, that the changes that occur now have to be dealt with, and the people who suffer from them now, protected from the consequences of those changes.
And that taking care now of those people, and in an effective way, is much more urgent than taking care, in a much more expensive, and a speculative way at that, of the people 50 years from now. Because we know what the weather is now, but can not be sure of what it will be in 50 years…
And they are surprised at the plain everyday people like myself who would love to contribute to organizations, like The Heartland Institute, which try to make open discussions on science open to one and all…
Gary Pearse @3:46: good point about the under-representation of engineers (and others doing “hard math stuff”) in the ranks of the climate activists. They don’t have time to go to the rallies and beat bongo drums against carbon pollution. They are also trained to detect BS at femtomolar levels. And having worked so hard to learn how to do real stuff, and not just sling lines from their Post-Modern Word Power Spin Kit(tm), they probably too much intellectual self-respect to play along.
There is a cool little book called “The Politics of Science” that has essays showing how these scares are used over and over to gain power. One of the essays by a nuc power expert bewails the fact that while he and his fellows were learning how to build the nuc power systems, they were being silently outflanked on the same campuses by the activists who were learning THEIR profession: how to rabble-rouse and foment fear, who to network with in the government and NGO and media communities. They never knew what hit them. Same here.
Ugh. The “eadler” again? Its presence on a comments thread discourages reading and participation; nausea is so unpleasant!
anticlimactic says: March 4, 2012 at 2:25 am
Thanks for the visual. I’ll never be able to listen to Gore, Mann, Hanson, Suzuki, Gleick, et al. in the same way ever again! I might even be able to “enjoy” their prater now. 😉
Anthony,
Perhaps you could shine a spotlight on junk journalism at other “news”papers while you’re at it…
The Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J. had a ludicrous editorial “THE DIRTY TRUTH BEHIND THE WAR ON SCIENCE” that included the following gem:
‘… The most revealing documents, however, lay out Heartland’s plans to spend $100,000 to build an anti-climate change curriculum for schools that shows “that the topic of climate change is controversial and uncertain – two key points that are effective at dissuading teachers from teaching science.”
There’s your smoking gun. ‘
This editorial was published AFTER the 2012 Strategy document was identified as a fake by the entire blogosphere and Heartland, yet The Star-Loser highlighted it anyway as if the fiction was fact – ironically a sad commentary on their journalistic incompetence.
http://digital.olivesoftware.com/Repository/ml.asp?Ref=U3RMLzIwMTIvMDIvMTcjQXIwMTQwMw%3D%3D&Mode=Gif&Locale=english-skin-custom
To date I’ve seen neither a correction nor a retraction. This is knee-jerk ignorant “journalism” perfectly suited to uncritical acceptance of every alarmist soft-lob press release.
Amthony! You were completly right to ban Eric Adler in the first place, Because you are a kind and forgiving person you changed your mind. YOU were wrong, Go back to your origjibal correct judgement,
Allan MacRae
@March 4, 2012 at 1:00 am
You originally claimed that the FACTS have not changed in decades. Now you say that you meant scientific theory has not changed. FACTS are not scientific theories.
Your claim that the reduction in Arctic Sea Ice has not been accelerating is wrong. The plot that you have shown, which looks at a series of annual plots, obscures the time dependence through the years. The season in which the ice cover has the largest variation from year to year is summer. Average Arctic Sea Ice coverage in July and August has been trending downward at an accelerating rate.
http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20110906_Figure3.png
The winter coverage is not that revealing, because the temperature in the Arctic region is always low enough to freeze the ocean surface in the winter. Multi year ice is decreasing faster than sea ice coverage or sea ice area.
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/future/sea_ice.html
Your claim that there has been global cooling is based you your interpretation of a noisy UAH plot overlaid with a sinusoidal curve. If you look at a plot of annual global temperature averages, you can easily see that global warming is still happening. The steady forcing due to the increasing level of GHG’s is modulated by internal noise due to El Nino’s, aerosals, variations in solar radiance etc. The GISS surface temperature data and UAH show the same dependence, with UAH showing more sensitivity to El Nino.
http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/gissuah.jpg
BobM says:
March 4, 2012 at 6:33 am
Besides being mentioned in the strategy document, which Heartland has disowned, the project to pay Wojick for a curriculum for Global Warming Lesson plan was listed on page 19 of the Heartland Budget, a document which they do not disown, giving a figure of $75,000 in 3 quarterly installments.
Charlie A says:
March 3, 2012 at 9:43 pm
If you look at the report, it refers to a number of statements made by Harris, that cast doubt on the significance of the currently observed rise in sea level. Viewed in this context, it is fair to conclude that a statement about how land subsidence can be confused with sea level rise, is designed to cast doubt on the sea level data itself.
Eric Adler says: March 4, 2012 at 8:19 am
You write and quote nonsense, Mr. Adler.
I predicted global cooling in an article written in 2003. The IPCC predicted runaway global warming in 2001.
To date, none of the global warmists’ very-scary predictions have materialized.
Based on the IPCC’s perfect track record of being dead wrong, I suggest you bundle up.
What a thorough and witty writeup about this propaganda outlet! Nicely done. The next time someone cites that rag as a source I am going to link them back to your description so they know what they are dealing with.
P.S. amazingly enough, practically your entire review also applies to our very own New York Slimes. Cheers!
One way to tell you have been assimilated as a propagandist for the Church Of AGW is when you spout off things involving numbers that are impossible to justify but for your strong faith in the cause.
I count just 32 data points for Arctic sea ice extent year-to-year since 1979. In that small sample you have somehow …
[1] determined a trend which you call: “loss of Arctic Sea Ice”
[2] deduced a velocity for this trend and determined it is increasing: “acceleration of the loss of Arctic Sea Ice”
[3] and still had enough data points leftover to further deduce that the trend is not just accelerating but doing so quickly (exponentially perhaps?): “rapid acceleration of the loss of Arctic Sea Ice”
All this in just 32 data points? You should be an accountant. Financial records maintained by the average business can use someone with your creativity and imagination.
All kidding aside, this is where *you* should have been skeptical. You don’t even need to consider the obvious fact that data beginning in 1979 is by definition ‘cherry picking’ from the peak of a cold period to question the meme, all you need to ponder is how such dramatic and catastrophic conclusions can sanely be drawn from this small a data set. Think man!
Allan MacRae says:
March 4, 2012 at 8:58 am
“You write and quote nonsense, Mr. Adler.
“I predicted global cooling in an article written in 2003. The IPCC predicted runaway global warming in 2001.
To date, none of the global warmists’ very-scary predictions have materialized.
Based on the IPCC’s perfect track record of being dead wrong, I suggest you bundle up.””
It is my understanding that the very scary projections are not for the current period, but rather for 50 to 100 years in the future. I don’t see why it is significant that they haven’t materialized to date.
Looking at a graph of global annual average temperature, one sees a steady increase since 1980, despite a number of short term peaks and plateaus such as we are currently experiencing. These are due to internal variation due to solar cycles, volcanoes and El Ninos. None of these has had any lasting influence on the trend since 1980. The IPCC is projecting a long term trend, and the short term internal variation does not disprove their projections.
The Guardian’s daily circulation over the last 12 years.
Year 2000 = 401,560
Year 2005 = 376,816
Year 2010 = 302,285
Year 2012 = 229,753
I see a massive drop in the last 2 years. Keep it up chaps, at this rate your will be gone in the next 12 years or less and the likes of Suzanne Goldenberg will have to find another job. ;>)
With references
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_in_the_United_Kingdom_by_circulation#Circulation_1950.E2.80.931999