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
David A says:
“Joel, I think you failed logic 101.”
That’s because Joel Shore is a heavily politicized scientist. He is far from being objective, constantly labeling those he disagrees with as “ideologues”. That shows you exactly where he’s coming from: politics, not science. And although IANAR, Joel paints that entire political Party with his “anti-science” brush. But critical thinking isn’t Joel Shore’s strong suit, and as I’ve often pointed out, if it were not for psychological projection the alarmist crowd wouldn’t have much to say. So who is the real ‘ideologue’?
Joel Shore’s argument is the usual argumentum ad ignorantium fallacy: since he can’t think of what else could cause the planet’s natural emergence from the LIA, Joel assumes that CO2 must be the cause. But that is easy to debunk: the long term rising trend line from the LIA is the same, both before and after the runup of CO2 from ≈280 ppmv to ≈392 ppmv. There is no acceleration of the warming trend. Therefore, any effect from CO2 is too small to measure. CO2 is at most a bit player.
Shore’s next argument is that if the current warming trend from the LIA continued for “a thousand years”, we would all cook. Well, that’s true. But trees don’t grow to the moon, and warming cycles end. Joel sums it up with his preposterous statement that “there is no natural reason for warming over the last ~50 years”. How would Joel Shore know that?? The same warming trends have happened repeatedly. So now this time it’s different? Ha. As if. Joel is just squirming around trying to avoid the null hypothesis. But there’s no wiggle room.
Joel needs to run along now, back to Pseudo-Skeptical Pseudo-Science or Tamina, for some new talking points. The ones he posts here are just too easy to deconstruct. Even by an ‘ideologue’☺.
Joel Shore says:
March 16, 2012 at 5:34 pm
Why? Because the Republican party (among others) demand to see the results–like those from Mikey Mann? Or is it Eric Holder who’s giving you a thrill up your leg?
We’re after truth here, Mr. Shore. If you can’t see that then you can’t see. (By the way, whenever somebody injects what you’ve just said into the discussion, practically everybody knows you’ve lost the argument. Saul Alinsky would be proud–of you!)
And if you’re relying on organizations like the National Academy of Sciences to tell you what to believe, then you were completely brainwashed at university (and indoctrinated with poly-sci, to boot). I suggest you request a full tuition refund.
Andreas Fuchs says:
Andreas, if you think science depends on political preferences or racial and gender issues, you are like Joel Shore and should ALSO request a full tuition refund from your alma mater.
(Andreas must think gravity, mathematics, physics, the speed of light, etc. etc. all depend on the color of your skin or whether you’re male, female, or have a particular political persuasion. The notion is laughable!)
Smokey says:
March 16, 2012 at 6:44 pm
================================
Yes I agree. It is curious how he forgets the null hypothesis, then states, “…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…”
Besides the warmist, who ever said that “CO2 is the only significant forcing”? Of course there are other factors, the vast majority of which are natural, as well as responsibile for previous climate changes and are in fact the factors which form the null hypothesis. Joel howver, being somewhat of an educated troll, can only point to another human factor, one which was added as an as-hoc patch for the failed CAGW proposition. It is curious how he confesses ignorance to the real affect of aerosols.
Finally Joel ends with …”You seriously think that showing 3 years of temperature data says anything relevant about temperature trends?!?” Your first chart statted in 1871, another chart referred to 350 years, and your last chart could have easily showed 14 years of declining T, or 17 years of no significant trend, warming or cooling. As per typical “Shore”, he chose one aspect of a much longer post, and raised a pedantic point about it.
Andreas Fuchs says:
March 16, 2012 at 3:46 pm
David says
“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.
——————————————————————————————————-
I never said you stated “doom,” or “catestrophic”. In fact what you say is not relevant. However what the models say is relevant as they are used to form public policy. And they, the models, are used to put the “C” in CAGW. You cannot use computer models, which are falsified via observations, to determine public policy in some Orwelllian post normal world, and then later try to separate the science which has already been destroyed from politics. Your next comment once again does exactly that.
I said…
“How come you think our kids should only be taught clearly wrong and unscientific A.I.T. B.S.?”
You say…
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.” ( My intial perspective on this thus far irrelevant comment is that “settled science” is, in and of itself, not a scientific term, at any rate you continue….)
“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.”
(Andreas, I am sorry, but your statement here is beyond parody. Where did you get the idea that Heartland wished to have students think that the oceans are going to lower by 5m this century? Heartland is talking about the need for dozens of peer reviewed scientific papers which present a skeptical view of CAGW to be also taught in classrooms. Papers by well qualified PHD scientists. Papers which show that the atmosphere, land and oceans are not warming as expected by the CAGW meme; papers which indicate a stronger connection to solar influence affecting albedo, cloud formation and ocean absorbtion of solar insolation then previousely understood, and that these affects are in fact negative to warming. Also not taught are peer reviewed papers which show gaping flaws in the past climate proxy reconstructions, and in recent continental T trends like the Steig paper on an antarctica. Also not taught are undeniable revelations which show disengenuious unscientific mendacious behaviour of the “team” of CAGW scientist. I could quote from among peer reviewed literature, papers by Lindzen, Pielke, Christy, Spencer, Eschenbach, Scafetta, Myhre, Akasofu, Douglass, McIntyre and many others, all of whom have robustly challenged the dogma of a few cloistered warmists. These are not “big oil shills” as some try to claim, nor are they nutters. They are all eminent climate scientists who are showing that observations do not support the hypothesis that CO2 is significantly warming the planet, a hypothesis that is predicated on the false premise that historical climate has remained fixed for millennia, which is in contradiction of overwhelming evidence that temperatures were warmer than today a thousand years ago. I could point to 100 more papers that show that the medieval warm period was real, global, and warmer than today – a mountain of evidence against the warmists broken hockey stick. Additionally these scientist are unafraid to reveal their methodology and data, unlike many deacons high in the AGW hierarchy. The fact that climate alarmists reject the Scientific Method means that they are political advocates first, and mendacious scientists second.
Teaching the above is not the opposite of Gore’s AIT. Your comment is rejected as grossly uninformed at best. Your claim that “mainstream” scientists have reached a consensus is also completely wrong. For one example, more than 31,000 U.S. scientists have already signed the OISM Petition, which states:
The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.
There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.
Dr Frederick Seitz, past President of the National Academy of Sciences, wrote the petition’s cover letter. You can not get more ‘mainstream’ than Dr Seitz. Yet many alarmist, such as our own Joel Shore, futilely attempt to marginalize the tens of thousands of scientists who signed that statement. Compare that number with the fewer than a hundred political appointees who put together the UN/IPCC’s Assessment Reports, and you will begin to understand that there is no “scientific“ consensus.
—————————————————————————
Now you continue…
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).
——————————————————————————–
Smokey, as well as my comments to Joel Shore well answered your misconceptions here. There are numerous peer reviewed papers which show a lower sensitivity, and furthermore the observations support and inform these paers, wheras the observations discredit the IPCC papers and propaganda.
You continue…”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.
———————————————————————————————————
Andreas, OK, so you agree. Is this not particularly true when the models fail to match real world observations? Good luck with your efforts at understanding skeptical scientist and lay citizens in the US. I hope you admit that your comments are well answered.
RockyRoad says:
No…It is because the Republican Party is increasingly demanding ideological purity at the expense of science and fact. That is why Republicans like Sherwood Boehlert (former Chair of the House Committee on Science & Technology before he retired from Congress), who subscribe to the basic Republican principles but don’t put iheir ideology before fact and science, have found themselves to be increasingly at odds with the rest of the party.
The sort of mass abandonment of scientific principles and organizations in favor of “science” produced by a few pet scientists and promoted by ideological think-tanks is exactly the danger that I am talking about. You are essentially using the same sort of arguments that some on the Left used in the post-modernist movement to promote the idea that the scientific process has been corrupted by the biases of the scientists / society. Fortunately, such nonsense never really caught on in any serious way that threatened to derail public policy, as it now has on the Right.
And, I am not just relying on the NAS. I am relying on the fact that I know enough about the science to know why most of the attacks on the accepted science are wrong. However, the notion that the public policy community is supposed to decide that the best science is that promoted by right-wing think-tanks like Heartland rather than by the NAS is scary indeed!
Joel Shore says:
March 16, 2012 at 1:25 pm
“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”.
Similarly, omitting the information is presenting only a partial ledger. When the input flux from nature is so much larger than the human component, it does not take a lot of variation in the natural part to overwhelm the human component.
“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.”
This, again, is only a partial accounting. We do not actually know how rapidly those emissions are ultimately sequestered. We do not actually have all the input sources well quantified, and the errors do not have to be large to overwhelm the human component.
Bottom line: you accuse (though without actual proof) Heartland of presenting only partial facts, but you actually only want to present partial information yourself.
“No…It is because the Republican Party is increasingly demanding ideological purity at the expense of science and fact.”
A purely political statement. The Democrats are at least as guilty of doing the same in kind. The increasingly dominant Left campaigns against GM foods. The increasingly dominant Left believes wind and solar power can replace the energy produced by fossil fuels. The increasingly dominant Left thinks AGW is a slam dunk. They are, in a nutshell (an appropriate metaphor if there ever was one) scientifically illiterate.
Joel Shore,
“However, the notion that the public policy community is supposed to decide that the best science is that promoted by right-wing think-tanks like Heartland rather than by the NAS is scary indeed!”
I don’t know where such a notion exists, other than in the fevered imaginations of your own head. Heartland has asked only to promote debate. This is something they have shouted for over and over again. They have begged to host platforms where believers in AGW can debate sceptics. They – and all sceptics – want to see a free market (no pun intended) of scientific ideas, each competing to win support. Not by political fiat, as you imply, but by the merits of their ideas. But those on the other side of the debate see no sense in that.
I don’t blame them. Why should they enter into a free market of ideas? Everytime they have blundered into scientific debates they have lost, so why continue? Why put their hegemony at risk? They already command the fealty of the MSM, politicians, and those “politicaly correct” thinkers who man the committees of what were once august scientific bodies.
Vince Causey says:
This is the same sort of nonsense one always hears from the losers of the scientific debate in the scientific literature: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expelled:_No_Intelligence_Allowed All such people think that the scientific societies have been stacked against them and they would all prefer to have a public debate where they are judged by people who can’t tell when they are being deceived.
There is a reason why the U.S. government and other Western Democracies have decided to rely on non-partisan scientific sources of scientific judgement like the National Academy of Sciences rather than having science become a political football. And, there is a reason why the enemies of science, like Heartland, want to do what they are doing. That is why it was so natural for an organizations like NCSE, which was dedicated to fighting against attempts to water down the teaching of evolution and to put creation science (“intelligent design”) into schools, to also now take on the issue of climate change.
Bart says:
I don’t think being against GM foods have become a virtual litmus test for politicians in the Democratic Party in the way that climate change seems to have become that for the Republican Party, at least at a national level.
Bart: As for your views on CO2, we’ve been around on this many times before. Your views on the subject are rather extreme even within the “AGW skeptic” community and are completely off-the-map within the scientific community.
David A says:
Are you serious!?! Here is Seitz’s bio: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Seitz In his later years, Seitz was quite an extremist. And, here http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN03/wn080803.html is a description of Seitz and his cover letter and all of the shenanigans regarding the Oregon Petition from Robert Park (who is addressing an audience mainly of fellow physicists in his “What’s New” column):
Robert Park truly is “mainstream” in the sense that he actually attacks people on the Right AND the Left when they attack science. E.g., he regularly criticized on liberal Sen. Tom Harkin for creating the NIH’s Alternative Medicine.
David A says:
Completely nonsense. The science of the water vapor feedback is quite well understood and verified now. Clouds are uncertain…but the evidence that the net feedbacks are positive rests on a lot more than just computer models. There are a variety of analyses using evidence from studying paleoclimate (particularly the Last Glacial Maximum), the Mt Pinatubo eruption, the 20th century temperature record, the strength of the seasonal cycle, and the modern satellite record that all support such a positive feedback. The analyses that the feedbacks are negative come from basically two sources: Roy Spencer and Richard Lindzen. Lindzen and Choi’s first paper was so bad that even Spencer criticized it pretty heavily; the new version has not yet gotten analyzed in detail by scientists in the field (as far as I know) but you are banking a lot on one paper by someone whose track record in this particular field is not too good to believe that it will fare much better.
The case for negative feedbacks relies on essentially elevating the most recent analyses by Spencer ahd Lindzen’s (that the scientific community has not yet had the time to respond to) above all of the other work in the field, which given both their track records on fooling themselves in favor of the conclusions that they desire, is something you would only do if you, like them, really want the result to turn out a certain way.
That the net effect of clouds is cooling has been known for many years and is not the same thing as saying that the feedback is negative, since it is difficult to predict how clouds will respond…high and (even to a greater degree) low clouds.
I’m not sure where you are going with the rest of your talk about water vapor and all. The full radiative effects of water vapor on both shortwave and longwave radiation are well-understood, which is why you don’t find anyone debating this basic radiative physics in the scientific literature.
And, yes, clouds remain a large uncertainty and that is acknowledged and should be. However, the notion that clouds miraculously save us from significant warming is one that has very little support and lots of evidence going against it in the scientific literature.
In the end, this is all about people wanting to elevate the small amount of science that supports what they want to believe for ideological reasons and ignore the large amount of science that contradicts it. And, to do so, in the light of all of the respected scientific authorities disagreeing with them, they have to create fanciful stories about how the scientific authorities have all been corrupted and so on and so forth.
It is the same thing that we have seen whenever science runs up against strongly-held ideological or religious beliefs and/or powerful economic interests. We’ve seen it in the fight over evolution, we’ve seen it in the fight over the dangers of tobacco (and CFCs and …) and we are seeing it again here.
David A says:
I chose several aspects of Smokey’s post to take issue with. Smokey’s MO is just to throw a bunch of nonsense out and hope that a little sticks. The fact that he used a plot that had only three years of data to illustrate the temperature trend should alone be enough to disqualify him as any sort of trustworthy authority. However, I also pointed out several other problems with several of the other plots & statements in his post.
Joel Shore says:
March 17, 2012 at 1:53 pm
‘Bart: As for your views on CO2, we’ve been around on this many times before. Your views on the subject are rather extreme even within the “AGW skeptic” community and are completely off-the-map within the scientific community.’
Meaning you don’t understand what I have said. Actually, my views are based on pretty standard knowledge in scientific circles outside the very insulated and primitive mainstream Climate Science community, where they are determined to reinvent the wheel, and are doing a very poor job of it.
It’s nice that you find comfort in the safety of the herd. From what I have seen, were I you, I would do the same.
Joel Shore says:
March 17, 2012 at 1:53 pm
“I don’t think being against GM foods have become a virtual litmus test for politicians in the Democratic Party in the way that climate change seems to have become that for the Republican Party, at least at a national level.”
A) How many of the remaining contenders for the Republican nomination for President counts himself a “climate change” skeptic?
B) How many of the Democrat nominees believes we can replace fossil fuels with algae generated bio-fuel? How many billions has he thrown away on “Green” energy ventures to date?
Here is a hint: B is much less than A.
Oops. B is much greater than A on a percentage basis.Please don’t make some childish taunt in reply (which is about the abysmal level of debate generally expected from your side). I changed A and B before posting, but forgot to update the hint.
Bart,
What I have said is:
This is evidenced by the fact that of the 4 candidates left in the race, two are hard-core climate change skeptics and the other two once seemed to accept the scientific consensus and the need to take action but seem to have found it necessary to modify their position, at least for the Republican primaries. What they would say in the general election or do if / once elected is anybody’s guess.
Only Huntsman seemed to be brave enough to suggest that Republicans would do best to accept the scientific community’s opinion on such a scientific issue and he is no longer in the race. As I have said, I believe that there was a time in the past when there was generally pretty bi-partisan acceptance that the National Academy of Sciences should be relied on for scientific opinions more than the candidates own personal views of the science. Even George W Bush felt it necessary to at least pretend to listen to NAS’s views on the subject.
As for “green energy”, like every major technological change, the change in how we produce energy will involve technologies that succeed and technologies that fail.
A) There is undeniably greater diversity of opinion, and therefore a healthier approach to addressing complex scientific issues, in the Republican Party than in the Democratic Party
B) The ones who are skeptics are more closely following the scientific method, since there genuinely is not sufficient, even preponderant, evidence to conclude that humans are responsible, in whole or in part, for any of the recent swings in global climate
C) Regarding the NAS: sorry, you do not get to appoint an omnipotent authority to whom the public must abdicate any capacity for rational thought and accept whatsoever they decree, no matter how flimsy the basis. This is America. If you do not like our system of rights and freedoms, nobody will stop you from moving somewhere more congenial to your outlook.
D) “Green energy” is a joke. Nothing is going to supplant fossil fuels as our dominant source of energy in my lifetime or in yours. Anyone who believes solar and wind power will is scientifically incompetent.
Thanks for admitting Joel Shore, that you are against the free market of ideas.
Joel Shore says:
“… ideologues like yourself…”
Ever look in the mirror, Joel? You are by far the biggest ideologue posting here.
If it were not for psychological projection you wouldn’t have much to say.
. . .
David A says:
March 16, 2012 at 10:59 pm [ … ]
Joel Shore is cherry-picking one particular chart out of several that I posted above [March 16, 2012 at 4:40 pm]. If Joel Shore would look at all the charts, he would see that nothing unusual is occurring, thus the global warming scare that he is always pushing is falsified. Instead, Shore deviously cherry-picks one chart and argues with that strawman, ignoring the big picture.
Joel Shore also regularly cites the now discredited APS, from which the esteemed Dr. Hal Lewis resigned. Dr. Lewis objected to the corruption of the APS by a very small clique that presumes to speak for the entire membership, and which refuses to allow the entire membership to respond to a range of neutral poll questions. The APS is losing membership as a result. But they do not really care, because the insider clique has made the APS a propaganda source for people like Joel Shore to point to in his endless appeals to authority. Joel Shore supports the APS’ corruption because it fits his narrative. Now the APS is in trouble, because it is descending into Langmuir’s pathological science:
The APS, like the global warming scare in general, is currently at #6. And neither the APS nor Joel Shore can put Humpty Dumpty back together again. The ultimate Authority — planet earth — is falsifying catastrophic AGW. As for mere AGW: it is to insignificant to worry about. We could do with a little more warmth — and lots more CO2.
Bart,
What people have the right to do in a free society and what they should do are sometimes two different things. Indeed, people have the right to ignore scientific bodies and just turn science into an ideological football. Heck, they even have the right to turn to Shamans for advice on issues instead of scientists. That still does not mean that it is the approach that those of us who believe in science-based policy will endorse.
Joel Shore says:
March 18, 2012 at 1:44 pm
“That still does not mean that it is the approach that those of us who believe in science-based policy will endorse.”
Get over yourself, Joel. You’re not on the side of “science” here. You are on the side of conformity and religious non-thought dressed up in the guise of science.
Really. Once again Joel Shore falls back on his ‘ideology’ crutch. He’s a Cult follower with a thin veneer of science, always blaming skeptics for his own personal faults.
There is nothing unusual happening with the planet’s temperature. What we are observing is natural variability, and all the hand-waving in the world won’t change that fact. If human activity has any effect — still a big “if” — it is minuscule, and not worth worrying about.
The belief in climate disruption is being falsified by the planet, so the true motivation behind the scare comes out: ideology. But that ideology is entirely on the part of the alarmist crowd. Scientific skeptics are just saying, “Show me.” The fact that the hand-wavers have no evidence to support their beliefs is enough to convince most folks that CAGW, and even AGW, is a baseless scare.