My response to Markey’s nosy letter would have been far less wordy. Two words would probably have been sufficient. The Heartland media release from today is below.
The Heartland Institute Responds to Rep. Markey Letter on ‘Fakegate’
MARCH 15, 2012 – The Heartland Institute today sent a letter to Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA), responding to Markey’s February 24 request for confirmation of the authenticity of stolen and forged documents distributed by Pacific Institute President Peter Gleick.
The scandal is known as “Fakegate” because one of the documents, supposedly describing Heartland’s “climate strategy,” was not written by anyone associated with The Heartland Institute and does not reflect Heartland’s work on environmental policy. Gleick has claimed he received the memo “in the mail” from an anonymous source.
In his reply to Rep. Markey, Heartland Institute President Joseph Bast writes, “Your letter repeats several false statements that appeared in the fake memo and have been circulated widely in the press. We thank you for this opportunity to set the record straight about our position on climate change.”
For more information on this scandal, visit Fakegate.org and Heartland.org. Media questions and requests for interviews may be directed to Tammy Nash at tnash@heartland.org and 312/377-4000 or Jim Lakely at jlakely@heartland.org.
The Heartland Institute is a 28-year-old national nonprofit organization with offices in Chicago, Illinois and Washington, DC. Its mission is to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems. For more information, visit our Web site or call 312/377-4000.
March 15, 2012
Hon. Edward J. Markey
Ranking Democratic Member
U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Natural Resources
Washington, DC 20515
Dear Rep. Markey:
In reply to the three questions posed in your letter to me of February 24, 2012:
(A) Documents 1-7 in the list you provided appear to be copies of confidential documents produced by The Heartland Institute and stolen by the Pacific Institute’s Peter Gleick. The eighth document in your list, titled “2012 Heartland Climate Strategy,” is not an authentic Heartland document or draft document. Peter Gleick claimed to have received this memo from an anonymous source, then falsely represented it as having come from The Heartland Institute.
(B) The inaccuracies of the eighth document are documented in the attached memo, titled “ An Analysis of the Forged ‘Heartland Climate Strategy’ Memo,” which was posted on The Heartland Institute’s Web site on February 27. I am not aware of any “different authentic” documents that match your description.
(C) Documents 1-7 in your list have not been revised by Heartland staff since they were stolen by Peter Gleick. Document 8, the fake memo, is not an authentic Heartland document or draft document, therefore I do not know whether or not it has been changed. I suggest you ask the Pacific Institute if they know.
Your letter repeats several false statements that appeared in the fake memo and have been circulated widely in the press. We thank you for this opportunity to set the record straight about our position on climate change.
The stolen documents show The Heartland Institute addresses a wide range of topics, including school reform, health care policy, tax and budget issues, telecommunications, and insurance. Nearly all the funds we receive from our corporate donors are earmarked for research and education on those subjects, and not climate change.
The fake memo erroneously claimed that we received $200,000 from the Charles Koch Foundation to support our work on climate policy. In fact, that foundation gave only $25,000 – less than 1/2 of 1 percent of our budget – and the gift was earmarked for health care reform. The Charles Koch Foundation has publicly stated the correct amount and the project for which it was earmarked.
Similarly, the fake memo erroneously states that Heartland intends to fund its climate policy work “especially from corporations whose interests are threatened by climate policies.” In fact, Heartland gets very little funding from fossil fuel companies for its climate policy activities and does not intend to focus its fund raising efforts on fossil fuel companies.
The fake memo also states that Heartland’s K-12 education project aims at “dissuading teachers from teaching science.” This is absolutely untrue. Our goal is for teachers to teach more science, not less. Our K-12 education project is accurately described in one of the Heartland documents (No. 2 on your list) as follows:
[begin excerpt]
H.Global Warming Curriculum for K-12 Schools
Many people lament the absence of educational material suitable for K-12 students on global warming that isn’t alarmist or overtly political. Heartland has tried to make material available to teachers, but has had only limited success. Principals and teachers are heavily biased toward the alarmist perspective. Moreover, material for classroom use must be carefully written to meet curriculum guidelines, and the amount of time teachers have for supplemental material is steadily shrinking due to the spread of standardized tests in K-12 education.
Dr. David Wojick has presented Heartland a proposal to produce a global warming curriculum for K-12 schools that appears to have great potential for success. Dr. Wojick is a consultant with the Office of Scientific and Technical Information at the U.S. Department of Energy in the area of information and communication science. He has a Ph.D. in the philosophy of science and mathematical logic from the University of Pittsburgh and a B.S. in civil engineering from Carnegie Tech. He has been on the faculty of Carnegie Mellon and the staffs of the U.S. Office of Naval Research and the Naval Research Lab.
Dr. Wojick has conducted extensive research on environmental and science education for the Department of Energy. In the course of this research, he has identified what subjects and concepts teachers must teach, and in what order (year by year), in order to harmonize with national test requirements. He has contacts at virtually all the national organizations involved in producing, certifying, and promoting science curricula.
Dr. Wojick proposes to begin work on “modules” for grades 10-12 on climate change (“whether humans are changing the climate is a major scientific controversy”), climate models (“models are used to explore various hypotheses about how climate works. Their reliability is controversial”), and air pollution (“whether CO2 is a pollutant is controversial. It is the global food supply and natural emissions are 20 times higher than human emissions”).
Wojick would produce modules for Grades 7-9 on environmental impact (“environmental impact is often difficult to determine. For example there is a major controversy over whether or not humans are changing the weather”), for Grade 6 on water resources and weather systems, and so on.
[end excerpt]
As this description makes clear, we seek to improve rather than undermine the teaching of science in K-12 schools. Dr. Wojick is highly qualified to conduct this project. The fact that this project is not a secret or in any way covert is shown by the fact that it is described in our latest membership newsletter, which is posted prominently on our Web site.
Is an effort to create a curriculum that “isn’t alarmist or overtly political” the same thing as “denialism” or being “anti-climate”? I hope the answer is obvious to you. The magnitude of a human effect on climate is not settled science. Scientists who point this out are not “deniers,” they are in the mainstream of the scientific community.
The fake memo further states that Heartland thinks “it is important to keep opposing voices out” of publications such as Forbes.com. Once again, the truth is just the opposite. Heartland spokespersons debate other experts at fora all across the country and Heartland invites persons who disagree with it to speak at its own events.
Finally, your repeated claim that the documents were “leaked” is incorrect. As noted above, Peter Gleick has admitted to obtaining documents 1-7 under false pretenses. No one at Heartland “leaked” these documents to the press. We continue to ask that the stolen documents, along with the forged document and commentary based on it, be removed from Web sites and that retractions be issued.
In conclusion, we appreciate your interest in our work and the opportunity to clarify our programs and positions.
Sincerely,
Joseph L. Bast
President
Joel Shore says:
March 15, 2012 at 6:08 pm
Great…So Heartland is not ““dissuading teachers from teaching science.” They are instead just promoting a curriculum put together by David Wojick that includes such gems as the statement that “Natural emissions [of CO2] are 20 times higher than human emissions”.
===============================================
Typical pendantic Shore comment, with an almost Gleick like insinuation of motive with the only evidence being Shore’s own words. Shore is insinuating that Heartland is, by telling the truth about the CO2 cycle and mankinds emissions relative to natural one’s, attempting to teach that human emissions are not the prime reason for the recent increase in CO2 from 280 to 390 PPM. However he has provided no evidence that this is so. Perhaps he should write his own version of a Heartland document, mail it to himself, and release it to the media.
P/S/ Joel, in my sons class room the kids (10th grade) presented their science projects. Four of them were about the satanic gas CO2. Not one of the kids understood ANY of the benefits of CO2, and not one of these kids realised that those benefits are KNOWN, whereas their hypothetical unrealised predictions of impending doom, were being falsified by the earth itself.
Just how stupid is Joel Shore? Sheer arrogance makes him post like a moron.
For those who want justice and want it now. It’s interesting to me the measured requests, responses and demands given by Heartland from the outset. Like there is a metronome beating in the background to a slow soothing tempo. When a critical mass is reached, the plan they have will be plain to all of us.
Here’s hoping you’re right – but from what I’ve seen so far, there are never any serious repercussions for people like Gleick and those who support them.
01100110 01110101 01100011 01101011 00100000 01101111 01100110 01100110
the most appropriate response
Anthony,
the news is that Heartland confirms the authenticity of the other seven documents, so let’s talk about it. I found in the document titled “Fundraising Plan” (p.19) this:
Because of Watts’ past work exposing flaws in the current network of temperature stations (work that The Heartland Institute supported and promoted),[…]”
What kind of support did you receive from Heartland, please could you clarify?
“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.”
Will you receive the second rate of $44,000 this year?
REPLY: Dear Mr. “Fuchs”,
Heartland paid for publishing my surfacestations work in this color book in 2009. Note they are clearly listed on the inside cover.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/surfacestationsreport_spring09.pdf
This book resulted in the Federal Government General Accounting Office conducting an investigation, and agreeing with my premise, that the network needed work and was out of spec. Here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/30/gao-report-on-the-poor-quality-of-the-us-climate-monitoring-network/
I published a peer reviewed paper on the findings, where the Heartland document is referenced:
Link to the paper (final print quality), Fall et al 2011 here http://surfacestations.org/Fall_etal_2011/fall_etal_media_resource_may08.pdf and here http://pielkeclimatesci.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/r-367.pdf
Fall et all 2011 supplementary information here http://surfacestations.org/fall_etal_2011.htm
As for the second funding part this year, I don’t know. The idea was to solicit for phase 2 of the project when it is up and running, late June or July. I’m working on it now, gathering the code, database elements and hardware platforms to make it happen. We’ll see how it is received once phase1 is online this summer. It will be free to the public.
Now I have a Question for you:
You’ve posted here as Alexander, Alexander Fuchs, Capo, and now “Andreas Fuchs” – do you have multiple personality disorder or are you being purposely devious?
– Anthony Watts
Anthony,
thanks for your response.
I thought that a honest question deserves a real name, which is my true first name. I’ve posted very seldom here and didn’t take into regard it could be a matter of confusion. If I was wrong, I beg your pardon, next time I will stick to Capo.
There was much of talk about the strategy memo and I wondered why you gave no thoughts to the other documents which provided some information about you. I’ve waited for several weeks but nothing happened. Now that Heartland confirmed the authenticity it’s the right time to discuss the contents of the real Heartland documents.
We don’t need to discuss if Dr. Wojick is dissuading teachers from teaching science. But we should discuss this:
Dr. Wojick proposes to begin work on “modules” for grades 10-12 on climate change (“whether humans are changing the climate is a major scientific controversy”), climate models (“models are used to explore various hypotheses about how climate works. Their reliability is controversial”), and air pollution (“whether CO2 is a pollutant is controversial. It is the global food supply and natural emissions are 20 times higher than human emissions”).
Is it really controversial, that CO2 is a greenhouse gas und more CO2 leads to more warming? Of course not, it’s a fact.
Did you realize that Heartland published the letter to Markey and the E-mail exchange between Heartland and Gleick not at heartland.org, but in your blog? Did you realize that you acted just that way Heartland wanted you to do? I missed some critical distance and remembered $88,000 all the time.
REPLY: Hmmm, are you mentally ill? Sure seems like it with the multiple personalities, mind control suggestions, and all the worry about conspiracy etc.
Do your homework before you spout off like that again: http://heartland.org/press-releases/2012/03/15/heartland-institute-responds-rep-markey-letter-fakegate
The fact is though that the CO2 warming response is logarithmic, not linear, and the disaster scenarios fomenting by the warmy worriers depends on feedback mechanisms, which so far don’t seem to be happening and there are a number of credible studies showing this.
And if Al Gore can push his flawed AIT film in schools, why is it so terrible to show this other side? I’ll tell you why, because the AGW movement is rife with noble cause corruption, and they can’t win on the merits of facts so far.
Pick a persona and stick with it. Andreas Fuchs is the one we’ll pass through from now on, all the other fakes will get deleted. – Anthony
Go procreate?
Dave says: March 15, 2012 at 3:26 pm
“We refer you to the reply given in the case of Arkell v. Pressdram” would have been my choice.
For anyone wondering at the reference, a legal discussion of it can be found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Eye#Litigation
Mind that children are escorted from the area of the screen…
Veritas says:
(and similar things from Bart, Stephen Richards, PaulID, David A, and Venter)
What I disagree with is doing accounting by looking at only one side of the ledger. It is like trying to figure out how your bank balance will change by looking only at your deposits and none of your withdrawals.
The point about the natural emissions into the atmosphere is that they are more than matched by natural absorptions from the atmosphere. In fact, the only reason why the current concentration in the atmosphere is not more like 500 ppm than 390 ppm is that about half of our emissions rapidly segregate into the land biosphere and ocean mix layer.
So, a statement that natural emissions are 20 or 30 times larger than human emissions without any context, like noting that these are not net numbers and explaining that the rise in CO2 levels in the atmosphere is thus attributable to our emissions, is basically lying to…or actively deceiving…the students. It is not science…It is political propaganda masquerading as science.
Capo (Andreas) says:
March 16, 2012 at 12:36 pm
“Dr. Wojick proposes to begin work on “modules” for grades 10-12 on climate change (“whether humans are changing the climate is a major scientific controversy”), climate models (“models are used to explore various hypotheses about how climate works. Their reliability is controversial”), and air pollution (“whether CO2 is a pollutant is controversial. It is the global food supply and natural emissions are 20 times higher than human emissions”).
Is it really controversial, that CO2 is a greenhouse gas und more CO2 leads to more warming? Of course not, it’s a fact.
==================================================
Capo, pointing out that the “models” claim of impending doom from CO2 emissions is based on a hypothetical postive feedback, which the observations show is likely negative, and that the benefits of CO2 are KNOWN, while the harm is unrealsied conjecture, is not the same thing as saying increasing CO2 has zero affect on the climate. BTW, over thirty thousand scientist with over 11,000 PHDs agree withwhat I just pointed out, but this is not taught in the schools. How come you think our kids should only be taught clearly wrong and unscientific A.I.T. B.S.?
Anthony,
“The fact is though that the CO2 warming response is logarithmic, not linear,…
Yes, of course. Did I tell something different??
“Do your homework before you spout off like that again: http://heartland.org/press-releases/2012/03/15/heartland-institute-responds-rep-markey-letter-fakegate“
You’ll be surprised, but that’s the website where I started. I was disappointed, because I’ve found no link to the letter to Markey and no comment about the auhtenticity of the 7 documents over there. Did I miss s.th.?
“Hmmm, are you mentally ill?”
Hmm, I feel some bad vibrations. Time to say good bye.
Best regards
Andreas
I wish that were true. Unfortunately, what little leaks by the lid the MSM is keeping on this is still way under the radar of people that aren’t actively looking for it.
David A says:
Because that number represents only a tiny fraction of the total number of scientists and most of those scientists did not have expertise in climate science…or anything particularly close to it. (Besides the fact that said petition is now about 15 years old.) And, in actual fact, none of the major scientific societies, be they professional societies in the relevant fields or the National Academy of Sciences (or any of the analogous societies in other nations) agree with your point of view.
If we get 30,000 people who claim to be scientists to say that they agree with intelligent design rather than evolution, do we have to teach that in the schools too?
Joel Shore says:
March 16, 2012 at 1:25 pm
Veritas says:
Do you disagree with the statement about natural vs. man-made CO2? The IPCC shows that natural emissions are closer to 30 times more than human emissions.
and similar things from Bart, Stephen Richards, PaulID, David A, and Venter)
————————-
What I disagree with is doing accounting by looking at only one side of the ledger. It is like trying to figure out how your bank balance will change by looking only at your deposits and none of your withdrawals.
The point about the natural emissions into the atmosphere is that they are more than matched by natural absorptions from the atmosphere. In fact, the only reason why the current concentration in the atmosphere is not more like 500 ppm than 390 ppm is that about half of our emissions rapidly segregate into the land biosphere and ocean mix layer.
So, a statement that natural emissions are 20 or 30 times larger than human emissions without any context, like noting that these are not net numbers and explaining that the rise in CO2 levels in the atmosphere is thus attributable to our emissions, is basically lying to…or actively deceiving…the students. It is not science…It is political propaganda masquerading as science.”
=========================================
Well Joel, you proved my point exactly that you are being Gleick like in ASSUMING you know that the intended Heartland for schools was to simply explain away CO2 as being inconsequential because it is a small percentage of the total emissions. Like Gleick, you take a part of a statement, and assume the rest. As I stated, why don;t you just mail yourself a fake Heartland document stating what you think they intend to teach, and give that to the media as from Heartland. hat they were really pointing out is in the context of my comment to Cato, ”
Capo, pointing out that the “models” claim of impending doom from CO2 emissions is based on a hypothetical postive feedback, which the observations show is likely negative, and that the benefits of CO2 are KNOWN, while the harm is unrealsied conjecture, is not the same thing as saying increasing CO2 has zero affect on the climate. BTW, over thirty thousand scientist with over 11,000 PHDs agree with hat I just pointed out, but this is not taught in the schools. How come you think our kids should only be taught clearly wrong and unscientific A.I.T. B.S.?
Perhaps you wish to answer my question at the end.
Leave a Reply
David A says:
It is a reasonably safe assumption given:
(1) I have seen David Wojick’s comments on WUWT.
(2) It would be rather strange for Bast to give a few-sentence summary of what Wojick was proposing to teach in his letter to Markey in which he presented it in the worst possible light…and that the next sentence that Bast left out, it was explained how, nonetheless, one also has to consider the absorptions of CO2 from the atmosphere and once one considers this, we find that the significant post-industrial CO2 rise that has and will occur is due to our emissions. I rather imagine it more likely that the full curriculum will be display less fidelity to the currently-accepted science than how Bast has chosen to portray it with selected quotes.
I have already responded to this in a post you might not how seen yet. As for the last sentence, I believe in teaching students the best science as we understand it. Here is the language that I settled upon in a worksheet for college students in my introductory physics course in which I had the students look at the radiative balance of the Earth and, in particular, calculate the amount the temperature would have to rise “all else being equal” to offset a 4 W/m^2 increase in forcing due to a doubling of CO2 levels in the atmosphere: [The answer being ~1.1 deg C.]
> You’ll be surprised, but that’s the website where I started. I was disappointed, because I’ve found no link to the letter to Markey and no comment about the auhtenticity of the 7 documents over there. Did I miss s.th.?
You did.
Go Heartland.org, click environment, then click “News Releases”. The very first item is:
Heartland Institute Responds to Rep. Markey Letter on ‘Fakegate’
Joseph Bast
– Environment, – Law
– March 15, 2012
MARCH 15, 2012 – The Heartland Institute today sent a letter to Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA),…
I am sure there are other paths to the news release from Heartland’s home page.
Or you could go fakegate.org which Is Heartland’s dedicated site to the Gleick affair, and the very first item, at the top of the page, in large letters, partly red, mostly bold says:
UPDATE: March 15
Heartland Institute Responds to Rep. Markey
Letter on ‘Fakegate’
Read the press release and response here.
So yes you did miss it. I don’t think you even looked. Or if you did look, it doesn’t reflect well on your powers of observation since you didn’t look in either of the obvious places to look for a news release on this topic.
You also cite this paragraph:
Dr. Wojick proposes to begin work on “modules” for grades 10-12 on climate change (“whether humans are changing the climate is a major scientific controversy”), climate models (“models are used to explore various hypotheses about how climate works. Their reliability is controversial”), and air pollution (“whether CO2 is a pollutant is controversial. It is the global food supply and natural emissions are 20 times higher than human emissions”).
And then respond:
> Is it really controversial, that CO2 is a greenhouse gas und more CO2 leads to more warming? Of course not, it’s a fact.
There’s a non sequitur there, or two in fact.
There’s nothing in the paragraph your cite which claims that CO2 isn’t a greenhouse gas, or that more CO2 wouldn’t cause warming.
The only phrase that even comes close to what you claim it’s questioning is ““whether CO2 is a pollutant is controversial” – but that phrase doesn’t say the Wojick is disputing that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, etc. It just says that he is allowing questioning of whether it should be classified as a pollutant.
A pollutant is not the same thing as a greenhouse gas, and vice-versa. You are eliding two categories (greenhouse gas and pollutants) as if these 2 different categories are coterminous – but clearly they are not.
To give an example:
Mercury released from industrial processes is a pretty nasty pollutant, but I’m not aware of anybody claiming it’s a greenhouse gas.
Conversely, water vapor is a greenhouse gas, but I’m not aware of anybody seriously stating it’s a pollutant.
So to summarize on this point: You’re reading words into the quote that aren’t there. Which is quite an interesting divergence from the earlier point, where you were unable to read things that were there.
David,
“Capo, pointing out that the “models” claim of impending doom from CO2 emissions is based on a hypothetical postive feedback, which the observations show is likely negative,”
Please, David, be fair. “Doom” is a word I would never use, it’s not a scientific category.
“How come you think our kids should only be taught clearly wrong and unscientific A.I.T. B.S.?”
I don’t recommend anything with regard to US-schools. But I’m a science teacher in Germany, (sorry for my bad English) so I think about what I would teach my classes in climate physics (“would”, because climate physics is not part of our school curriculum in physics in Nordrhein-Westfalen,).
Teaching science means teaching settled science here. For example, a teacher of biology never would mention intelligent design. I teach Einstein’s theory of relativity, regardless of some people raising doubt about it. Maybe it’s wrong, who knows, but it’s the best theory explaining gravity, space and time.
If I would show a film about climate science which contains claims of sea level rise of 5m or more until 2100 or using words like “doom”, I would have a problem and some hard work to elaborate what science really says. It seems, Heartland thinks, if pupils would see a second film showing the other extreme, it’s balanced and ok. Wrong, I would have two problems instead of one.
Now take a look to Heartland’s words about Wojick’s moduls:
“(“whether humans are changing the climate is a major scientific controversy”
Sorry, but CO2 is a greenhouse gas and more CO2 means more warming. There’s broad consensus, I could quote also skeptic scientists like Spencer or Lindzen. The amount of this further warming is controversial, I agree. Pupils should get acquainted with uncertainties, so what’s wrong with teaching, that the expected warming for 2xCO2 is likely between +2 and 4.5°C? It’s right, there are some studies indicating lower values (so let’s hope for good luck;-) and some, indicating higher values (uups).
Next claim:
“models are used to explore various hypotheses about how climate works. Their reliability is controversial”
I admit I don’t know what “explore various hypotheses” should mean in the context of GCMs. But that models are not reality and that models are only useful within their limits is a important thing all pupils should know about every part of science.
Last point:
“whether CO2 is a pollutant is controversial. It is the global food supply and natural emissions are 20 times higher than human emissions”
Sorry, but that’s really amusing. If CO2 is a pollutant is a non-scientific question nobody would ask or answer in german schools. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, that’s enough for climate science and schools. I wondered why in the USA this question is hotly debated and had to learn, it’s because if EPA claims CO2 to be a pollutant, EPA could regulate it. Right? So this question is only important for the politcal discussion in the USA, I’m obliged by law to keep politics out of school.
It’s really sad to see how climate science got politicized espacially in the USA, where it seems to be part of the political battle between left and right. From my german perspective it’s hard to understand the US climate debate, but it’s the US debate which is most important for the world. So I try to understand by reading US newspapers, skeptic blogs, the Heartland documents and made the mistake to raise some questions here.
Best regards
Andreas
(“Capo” was a joke, there was some discussion about “climate capos” at Keith Kloor’s excellent blog, I couldn’t resist to adopt it)
Joel Shore says:
March 16, 2012 at 2:27 pm
David A says:
Well Joel, you proved my point exactly that you are being Gleick like in ASSUMING you know that the intended Heartland curriculum for schools was to simply explain away CO2 as being inconsequential because it is a small percentage of the total emissions.
————————————————————-
Joel shore says, It is a reasonably safe assumption given:
(1) I have seen David Wojick’s comments on WUWT.
—————————————————————————-
My response to Joel’s (1) First of all I am glad you admit it was an assumption, and since you provided no evidence, on WUWT or anywhere else, of David Wojick saying that “since natural emissions of CO2 are twenty times man kinds emissions, they, human emissions, can have zero affect of any kind on climate”; then your assumption remains without evidence and you have only succeeded AGAIN in demonstrating a Gleick like interpretation of the words used.
Joel Shore then gives his 2nd reason…
“(2) It would be rather strange for Bast to give a few-sentence summary of what Wojick was proposing to teach in his letter to Markey in which he presented it in the worst possible light…and that the next sentence that Bast left out, it was explained how, nonetheless, one also has to consider the absorptions of CO2 from the atmosphere and once one considers this, we find that the significant post-industrial CO2 rise that has and will occur is due to our emissions. I rather imagine it more likely that the full curriculum will be display less fidelity to the currently-accepted science than how Bast has chosen to portray it with selected quotes.”
———————————————-
My response to Joel’s comment number (2) explaining his admitted ASSumptions. First of all Joel you know perfectly well that no “few-sentence summary” of a proposed curriculum can do any science course on CAGW justice. Your next sentence is a logical fallacy, where your …”for Bast to give a few-sentence summary of what Wojick was proposing to teach in his letter to Markey, in which he presented it in the worst possible light”, as you are the one assuming the worst possible light, and you have already admitted this “worst possible light” is an assumption, therefore you are not logically allowed to assume that Bast meant what your assumption is. You then go on to explain that it is not logical in your view that Bast meant by this that the CO2 rise is caused by human emissions, even though they are so small. Well, now you have created a straw man, as no one claimed he was illustrating that. Let us go back to what he actually wrote… “Dr. Wojick proposes to begin work on “modules” for grades 10-12 on climate change (“whether humans are changing the climate is a major scientific controversy”), climate models (“models are used to explore various hypotheses about how climate works. Their reliability is controversial”), and air pollution (“whether CO2 is a pollutant is controversial. It is the global food supply and natural emissions are 20 times higher than human emissions”).
So Joel, I see this as saying that the “models” claim of impending doom from CO2 emissions is based on a hypothetical positive feedback, which the observations show is likely negative, and that the benefits of CO2, of which annual human contributions are only 5%, are KNOWN, while the harm is un-realized conjecture. This not the same thing as saying increasing CO2 has zero affect on the climate. Now Joel, my interpretation is far more in context of what is written, where as your “worst possible light” ASSumption is a Gleick like attempt to make the Heartland program appear “anti-science”.
I will respond shortly to your other comments.
Bast is too polite (Honourable and Sincerely).
The problem of course is with voters who elect such incompetents as Markey – he cannot even look for himself and think.
Andreas Fuchs says:
“…so what’s wrong with teaching, that the expected warming for 2xCO2 is likely between +2 and 4.5°C?”
What is wrong with it is that the planet is telling a different story. Who should we believe? You, or Planet Earth?. You’re teaching the IPCC’s pseudo-science. Your numbers are much higher than what empirical observations show.
Furthermore, there is no change in the temperature trend line over the past 350 years, which includes both pre- and post-industrial revolution CO2 levels. The natural warming since the LIA has remained within very clear parameters. Therefore, any warming from the rise in CO2 is too insignificant to measure. You cannot even see it.
When real world obsevations falsify your models, why do you continue to believe the models? The models are wrong, as you can clearly see. The rise in CO2 has not caused any acceleration in temperatures. In fact, global temperatures are declining.
Admit it, you’re not really a science teacher, are you? How could you be, when you disregard the scientific method, the null hypothesis, and real world evidence?
Dear Moderators, this is my third attempt to post this, Please delet two of them if they all go through, but they appear not to be going to moderation.
Joel Shore previously responded to this comment of mine…
David A says…“Capo, pointing out that the “models” claim of impending doom from CO2 emissions is based on a hypothetical positive feedback, which the observations show is likely negative, and that the benefits of CO2 are KNOWN, while the harm is unrealized conjecture, is not the same thing as saying increasing CO2 has zero affect on the climate. BTW, over thirty thousand scientist with over 11,000 PHDs agree with hat I just pointed out, but this is not taught in the schools. How come you think our kids should only be taught clearly wrong and unscientific A.I.T. B.S.?
I then invited Joel Shore to also answer my last question. What follows is his answer. Before reading it please observe that he never answers the question at all, but instead takes off on a litany of what he would like to see taught.
———————————————————————————–
Joel Shore answers…
I have already responded to this in a post you might not how seen yet. As for the last sentence, I believe in teaching students the best science as we understand it. Here is the language that I settled upon in a worksheet for college students in my introductory physics course in which I had the students look at the radiative balance of the Earth and, in particular, calculate the amount the temperature would have to rise “all else being equal” to offset a 4 W/m^2 increase in forcing due to a doubling of CO2 levels in the atmosphere: [The answer being ~1.1 deg C.]
[In reality, all else will not be equal! As CO2 levels rise, more water vapor evaporates into the atmosphere. Water vapor is itself a strong “greenhouse gas” so this can lead to significant further warming. This is what is called a “positive feedback” because it magnifies the warming. Another positive feedback occurs when warming causes ice and snow to melt so that less sunlight is reflected back out into space and hence more gets absorbed, causing further warming. Finally, clouds may also change in ways that are difficult to predict and this can affect both the absorption of solar and emission of terrestrial radiation. Thus, the determination of the expected rise in temperature due to a doubling of CO2 levels is a very difficult problem! The best current estimates are that the temperature rise would be about 2 – 4.5deg C, although lower or higher values cannot be definitely excluded.]
———————————————————————————————
My response…
Now notice how Joel refuses to discuss the point that currently our children are learning about CAGW “science” from the unmitigated propaganda ravings of a politician. Joel will not condemn this, just as he defends Mannian science and Hansen’s ravings. Instead he goes off on an IPCC perspective of the science of CAGW as his ideal course, having nothing to do with my question. However, let me point out the IPCC view of CAGW science is well known to be deeply flawed by non peer reviewed water-mellon literature, as well as the fact that the IPCC ignores a great deal of skeptical peer reviewed literature.
The bottom line concerning the feedback debate is as I have pointed out. The positive feedbacks rest their veracity on computer models, where as the negative feedback rest their assertions on observations. Joel, in his course out line, ASSumes that the least understood cloud and water feedback are positive.
Joel , you know there are many unanswered questions concerning clouds and even W/V itself.
Does the presence of low level clouds over oceans heat or cool the planet? What about the convective clouds over the oceans?
The latest results from ERBE indicate that in the global mean, clouds reduce the radiative heating of the planet. This cooling is a function of season and ranges from approximately -13 to -21 Wm-2. While these values may seem small, they should be compared with the 4 Wm-2 heating predicted by a doubling of carbon dioxide concentration. So does additional W/V produce more low clouds?
Water vapor and clouds have a far larger effect on the SWR entering the ocean then CO2 has on the residence time of LWIR in the atmosphere. A CO2 induced LWIR atmospheric warming primarily increases evaporation at the ocean surface, which increases water vapor and clouds, which reduce SWR entering the oceans. This increase in evaporation is far more then the “models” predicted. SCIENCE July 7 2007 read Wentz et al, CO2 operates on a well known small percentage of the LWR in the atmosphere riding on the shoulders of water vapor. Water vapor and clouds effect a much larger portion of the TSI then CO2, and effect it not only at the LW spectrum in the atmosphere, but where it matters the most, at the SW spectrum entering the oceans. How much does W/V affect TSI at the surface? A solar spectrum chart shows that about 98% of that energy lies between about 250 nm in the UV and 4.0 microns; with the remaining as 1% left over at each end. Such graphs often have superimposed on them the actual ground level (air Mass once) spectrum; that shows the amounts of that energy taken out by primarily O2, O3, and H2O, in the case of H2O which absorbs in the visible and near IR perhaps 20% of the total solar energy is capture by water VAPOR (clear sky) clouds are an additional loss over and above that. As we do not know the residence time of SWR enetering the oceans we do not know the accumulative affect of this reduction at the surface. We do not know the amount of cloud cover created. We do not know solar affects on cloud formation. Joel’s assumption of postive affect is only based on the IPCC version of CAGW science.
Next I will respond to Joel’s last feedback.
[REPLY: All three were stuck in the spam folder. A little patience is usually all that is required. -REP]
Smokey,
and who are you? Give me a guess:
You are white, male and conservative. If right, think about it: Is physics dependend on racial and gender issues? But what about political preferences?
I won’t discuss your arguments, but I will tell you another story:
My pupils get within the topic “nuclear energy” the task to do some research how many victims were caused by Chernobyl 1986. They always present numbers in the range from some hundred to some 100,000. What should they learn? Media literacy, how to find reliable sources, Greenpeace or nuclear industry are no reliable sources. Sorry, but you failed – F.
PS:
You are right, I’m not a teacher. I’m Lukas Podolski, a great football player, playing for the world’s most famous club 1.FC Köln. And believe me, it’s called football, not soccer 😉
REPLY: OKaaaay, now you are Lukas Podolski? Like I said, you seem to have a multiple personality disorder. And that racial and gender stuff? Stop digging man! – Anthony
Smokey: There has been a principle in most Western Democracies that scientific issues used to inform public policy are decided by what the scientific community, as communicated through their organizations like the National Academy of Sciences in the U.S., say the science is, not what some ideologues like yourself say it is. This has generally been pretty bipartisan, up to the recent abandonment of it by ever larger segments of the ever-more extreme and anti-science Republican Party.
Your post is a good illustration of why this principle has proven useful as you illustrate the sort of poor use of scientific arguments that ideologues such as yourself engage in.
Just to point a few of the obvious ones (I’m sure others could find additional problems):
(1) Your “empirical observations” that claim to show that the warming is best fit by assuming a climate sensitivity of about 1.6 instead of 3.2 C actually show that the transient climate response is best fit by a value of 1.6 C, which is well within the range of numbers that the climate models used in the IPCC report have for their transient climate response. Furthermore, the whole method makes the poor assumption that CO2 is the only significant forcing when it is actually known that there are other significant forcings, including the aerosol forcing which is poorly enough constrained that it makes estimating the equilibrium climate sensitivity from the instrumental temperature record alone basically a fool’s errand.
(2) Saying that warming from the LIA is an explanation for the warming is no explanation at all. Who is to say that we would warm naturally from the LIA at some rate of 0.6 or 0.7 C per century and how long should that continue? If it continued for a thousand years, a very small time on the geological scale, the warming would exceed the warming from the last ice age until now. In fact, our best understanding of the climate system is that there is no natural reason for warming over the last ~50 years (e.g., given what we know about solar forcing and volcanic forcing plus the magnitude of any purely internal variability).
(3) You seriously think that showing 3 years of temperature data says anything relevant about temperature trends?!?
Joel Shore says:
March 16, 2012 at 1:43 pm
David A says:
BTW, over thirty thousand scientist with over 11,000 PHDs agree withwhat I just pointed out, but this is not taught in the schools.
Because that number represents only a tiny fraction of the total number of scientists and most of those scientists did not have expertise in climate science…or anything particularly close to it. (Besides the fact that said petition is now about 15 years old.) And, in actual fact, none of the major scientific societies, be they professional societies in the relevant fields or the National Academy of Sciences (or any of the analogous societies in other nations) agree with your point of view.
If we get 30,000 people who claim to be scientists to say that they agree with intelligent design rather than evolution, do we have to teach that in the schools too?
———————————————————————————
Joel, I think you failed logic 101. First of all the Oregon petition has far more qualified scientist then the environmental CAGW scientist, who mostly are environmental studies graduates, who decide that CAGW causes frogs to be bigger, or smaller, or a thousand other studies which take computer model projections of extreme warming and SL rise, and then predict disaster, hoping for more GOVT grants. Next it is apparent that real scientist study the science before forming an opinion, and furthermore CAGW is a relatively new science, with proponents, like Mann and Hansen, who are not “climate scientist. Also your comment about the world’s total number of scientist is silly. There also is no known survey of all the scientist, so your comment is not cogent. Additionally the original survey has continued to grow, so as it ages, it only grows stronger. Also it is well recognised that the scientific “societies” have ever become more “post normal” that is they are more political CAGW advocates, then scientific, while thousand of private scientist around the world withdraw their membeships. Your last sentance is a total fail. It was indeed thirty thousand plus scientist with over ten thosand PHD’s, not just “people”, and, as they did not ask for religion to be taught as science, your comment is not logical or cogent.
Andreas Fuchs says:
“You are white, male and conservative. If right, think about it: Is physics dependend on racial and gender issues? But what about political preferences?”
You are turning a science discussion into a discussion about race, gender and politics? There are plenty of Left leaning commenters here who reject the demonization of “carbon”. Scientific truth trumps politics, gender and race. Only those who believe in the CO2=CAGW narrative believe that politics, race and gender matter. It’s just a form of Post-Normal Science. Which is to say, pseudo-science.
The fact is that the planet is falsifying the UN/IPCC’s numbers. The fact is that the planet has been warming along the same trend line since the LIA. The fact is that CO2 makes no measurable difference to that trend line, whether CO2 is low or high. The fact is that the climate null hypothesis has never been falsified. The fact is that CO2 is harmless, and beneficial to the biosphere. More is better.
Those are real world, verifiable facts that I will be happy to discuss. But when the conversation turns to gender, racial and political topics, the conclusion is clear: because there is no measurable, testable evidence showing catastrophic AGW, or runaway global warming, or climate disruption, or any of the other doomsday scenarios that the alarmist crowd uses to scare the public, the only thing left is to derail the discussion with racial, political and gender comments.
Empirical evidence shows that scientific skeptics are on the correct side in this debate. Climate alarmists have no credible evidence supporting their repeatedly falsified conjectures. So they use models, which are validated by other models, in a circular climate pal review system – as the Climategate emails repeatedly demonstrate.
My advice is to teach your students the rigorous scientific method. As Prof Richard Feynman said, if your theory disagrees with observation, it is wrong. The IPCC’s numbers – and yours – disagree with observation.