I’ve talked about the slimy “Forecast the Facts” campaign before, where they are attempting to label your local TV weatherperson/meteorologist as a “denier” and pressure TV station management into making that person “toe the line” by having a bunch of fake form letters sent by “local viewers”. It is simply paid astroturfing.
For example, look how they label KOAA-TV’s Brad Sowder for not even wanting to take a position because it is a “political issue”:
Political is right, because today, those flailing PR geniuses at The Center for American Progress aka Think Progress, a front organization for all things left and “progressive” with a now $30 million+ annual budget (From 2008: CAP, which has 180 staffers and a $27 million budget, devotes as much as half of its resources to promoting its ideas through blogs, events, publications and media outreach. Source: Bloomberg ) let it slip (whether by design or accident we don’t know) that THEY are behind this “Forecast The Facts” outfit.
We always wondered who was funding this hate campaign against your local TV meteorologist, now we know, here’s the screencap with the proof:
Even though there is no hint of this association on the “Forecast The Facts” about page. Pants on fire and all that.
For those who don’t know, Brad Johnson of Think Progress, is one of the worst offenders of political climate alarm hype on the planet. He’s paid to make up stuff like blaming the people who live in the south for their political views, and bad weather is the punishment:
Obviously Johnson has learned nothing in a year, because what he says today is the same brand of irrational ugliness and hate, bold mine:
Countless lives were saved this weekend by vigilant government officials who warned of deadly tornadoes in Oklahoma, Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska — states whose politics are dominated by anti-government, anti-science ideologues.Over 100 tornadoes struck down in 24 hours, but only six people died in Oklahoma, Sen. Jim Inhofe’s home state, thanks to warnings from the National Weather Service scientists he has worked to discredit
…
Wichita, Kansas, the headquarters of Koch Industries, suffered $280 million in damage from a ferocious twister, but the “ever-increasing government” demonized by the Koch brothers prevented any loss of life.
Support your local TV weathercaster and meteorologist, don’t let them be cowed by well funded political sliming coming from The Center For American Progress.
And the next time someone tells you that “skeptics are well funded”, remind them of how much money CAP gets and how they put it to use.
===============================================================
Less that 24 hours after I made this report on the slip, TP rushed this CYA press release out with a FLASH attached to it. Heh, sorry, I already scooped you.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/04/17/465268/brad-johnson-joins-forecast-the-facts-campaign/
There is a website with extensive data on leftwing networks — and AGW is part of the left.
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/
If you spend some time, you can drill down to various funding sources, etc. There is a link to a website with IRS data on foundation funding.
Progress and progressive are Marxist derived terms.
Read Karl Popper’s The Poverty of Historicism.
Its no coincidence that the 20th century’s most important philosopher of science, was also the 20th century’s most important critic of Marxism.
Do facts have anything to do with weather reporting anymore ?
keep shining the light on these cockroaches – it scatters them.
now, if somebody would stop spilling all the crumbs they feast on, they wouldn’t be here in the first place.
“Over 100 tornados struck down in 24 hours”
Wow, those are some powerful bureaucrats!
“I think it’s about time they stopped using the word ‘progress’. Progress is an optimistic word and they assuredly do not represent optimism.”
I ALWAYS refer to so-called “liberals” as reactionary leftists.
trouble posting on Tips again today, but this is relevant nonetheless.
australia is so over-committed to a carbon tax/ETS, yet the EU/EC still haven’t worked out how to rig the game yet:
16 April: Reuters: Barbara Lewis: UPDATE 1-EU carbon trading reform proposal this yr-Oettinger
Writing by Nina Chestney; editing by James Jukwey
The European Commission is likely to prepare a legal proposal on reforming its emissions trading scheme (EU ETS) before the end of the year, EU Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger said on Monday.
Speaking at a European Wind Energy Association conference in Copenhagen, Oettinger said the 27-nation bloc’s trading scheme was failing to set a strong enough price to encourage investment in low carbon energy…
The European Parliament has called on the commission to draw up a plan to withdraw a certain number of permits from the scheme, but there is still division among member states…
Oettinger did not specify what the commission would propose but said the the trading scheme needed to be more immune to shocks, referring to the fact that caps on emissions were set too high and the system’s design failed to properly account for the effects of recession…
One way of introducing tighter caps would be for the EU to target a 30 percent cut in carbon dioxide emissions by 2020 instead of the current aim of 20 percent.
Poland, which as a heavy user of carbon-intensive coal fiercely opposes anything that could drive up the price of carbon permits, in March vetoed an attempt by the Danish presidency to get agreement on more ambitious milestones for carbon reduction.
Responsibility for reform of the ETS falls under the EU Commission’s climate division, rather than energy, although it has ramifications for energy policy…
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/16/carbon-eu-idUSL6E8FGBRW20120416
Ally E. says:
April 16, 2012 at 4:44 pm
This is so bad. It’s like they are trying to rush things through – attack “deniers”, pass laws and taxes, clamp down on public thinking – all before the balloon burst for them. As though if they can only peg AGW in place legally and morally, it will somehow make it true. This would be sad if it weren’t so utterly horrible.
It’s bad, but could be worse. Desperate people become angry and afraid and then become dangerous. Desperate, angry, fearful people with virtually unlimited funds can become very dangerous. Something to always keep in mind.
“Storms Kill Over 250 Americans In States Represented By Climate Pollution Deniers”
That leaves 50 million in states represented by non climate pollution denying whatever, huh? CA and NY and you’re already over that number.
Did these people ever learn arithmetic in grade school?
just one more version of “The Thought Police” …
“Countless lives were saved this weekend by vigilant government officials..”
Is this a paraphrase of some old Pravda story?
Of course, in the absence of Government sponsored weather forecasting nobody would bother with it and everyone would just die. Thank heavens our government saved us again.
An opinion buying machine that makes registered lobbyists in D.C. look like people you’d have a beer with.
Peter Kovachev says:
April 16, 2012 at 6:05 pm
Ally E. says:
April 16, 2012 at 4:44 pm
This is so bad. It’s like they are trying to rush things through – attack “deniers”, pass laws and taxes, clamp down on public thinking – all before the balloon burst for them. As though if they can only peg AGW in place legally and morally, it will somehow make it true. This would be sad if it weren’t so utterly horrible.
It’s bad, but could be worse. Desperate people become angry and afraid and then become dangerous. Desperate, angry, fearful people with virtually unlimited funds can become very dangerous. Something to always keep in mind.
*
Yes, I’m there already. It’s going to get ugly – it is getting ugly – but that ugliness will further expose them for what they are. Worldwide we need changes in government and for those new governments to pull the plug on funding. My guess is that’s what these communists see coming so they are coming heavy handed now. Panicking. I can see why it is part of the process of their collapse, but OMG it’s scary all the same.
pat says:
April 16, 2012 at 5:55 pm
“Poland, which as a heavy user of carbon-intensive coal fiercely opposes anything that could drive up the price of carbon permits, in March vetoed an attempt by the Danish presidency to get agreement on more ambitious milestones for carbon reduction.
Responsibility for reform of the ETS falls under the EU Commission’s climate division, rather than energy, although it has ramifications for energy policy…”
We should just prohibit the Danes from selling hydrocarbons on the world market.
The fun thing about Western Europe is that nobody here seems to know what logical thinking is.
In Canada there is an argument about whether organizations such as The David Suzuki Foundation should be de-listed as a charitable organization eligible for tax refundable donations because, by the rules, such organizations can spend only 10% of their revenue on advocacy AND that they must be “Canadian” donor supported to qualify. The DSF is shrieking about a freedom of expression violation, and that they receive 94% of their money from Canadians, while ignoring the fact that most of their revenue comes from non-Canadians (like the Pacific Institute and WWF/Greenpeace) who set up “Canadian” fronts to disperse their non-Canadian sourced monies. It strikes me that groups in the US probably receive a lot of their funding as tax-deductible donations, but the groups have definitions, as in Canada, that limit advocacy.
Is it possible – Climate Depot would be good on this – that the CAGW alarmist groups fall into the advocacy but non-charitable categories in the US as they do in Canada?
The Greens, intellectual or emotional or not, are surprisingly money oriented. The idea of paying 100% dollars for their opinion is not as happily received as paying 50% or less.
Is this applicable? Are US groups like WWF in a problematic position vis-a-vis their tax status as they (apparently) are in Canada?
Did I miss it? How is CAP getting their funding? Funny how the lack of AGW belief among those highly trained weather professionals does not seem to raise a scintilla of doubt in the tiny minds of the CAP staff.
Peter says:
April 16, 2012 at 4:12 pm
This is one of the better a$$ biters I’ve cut and pasted in a long time. Stay thirsty my friend.
Obviously Johnson has learned nothing in a year, because what he says today is the same brand of irrational ugliness and hate…
When the “progressive” message doesn’t sell, the playbook says to repeat it more often and more loudly, because in their universe, the failure doesn’t lie in the message, but in the audience. Watch for an increase in the number of polemics urging “re-education” and “treatment”…
Government Officials? I happen to live 1/2 mile from where one of the beasties touched down this weekend. While the National Weather Service does provide valuable and life saving information the local weathermen and chase teams provide the most valuable service “Early Warning”. I can’t think of a time when a warning was issued that was not first reported my the local news weathermen.
I grew up with the extreme weather in OK. Floods, Droughts, Heat Domes, Blizzards, 4″ Hail, Ice Storms, and Tornadoes. If I remember the quote right ” Will Rogers , If you don’t like the weather just wait a minute.”
Peter said:
April 16, 2012 at 4:12 pm
“As I’ve always said, global warming is a conspiracy created by scientists, the science organizations, the research journals, the universities, the government, NASA, the EPA, the liberal media, the liberal politicans, the green movement, the hippies, and of course the progressive bloggers, all doing the bidding of George Soros, Al Gore and James Hansen hiding out in their underground lair (below sea level of course) who concocted the whole thing in order to control your life, your money and your precious bodily fluids.”
Regarding the above (an attempt at sarcasm as blatant with the indirect reference to the general in the Dr. Strangelove movie):
“Conspiracy” is the wrong term. If, for example, Greenpeace makes an inaccurate statement on nuclear waste disposal (where deeply buried manmade isotopes are actually not that major in the long term compared to the literally many trillions of tons of uranium / thorium / potassium-40 naturally existing at a few parts per million concentration in Earth’s 30000 quadrillion ton crust), that is not a “conspiracy” but the relatively natural result of the inclinations of the majority who enter the group in the first place.
An implausible conspiracy is when something requires implausibly complete unity down to the individual level, when something would collapse upon any significant number of dissenters spilling the beans.
Global warming alarmism is not such and not a “conspiracy” in those terms as the movement survives and remains stable even when hundreds of climate scientists *have* dissented. There is paper after paper dissenting (as seen well on lists at co2science.org where often one can find a copy of a paper online just by googling part of its title in quotes plus pdf next to that). CAGW claims represent the tendencies and natural leanings of a majority (not 100% but a majority) of the kind of hardcore environmentalist activists who particularly enter and rise to the top of the media-influencing organizations with the greatest interest and funding.
Such as the average utility company actually does not generally have their survival dependent on the outcome on the AGW debate one way or another; if electricity prices rise, they would just pass them on to consumers. Those companies specialize primarily in real physical production, not propaganda generation. It is rather some major environmentalist groups who have their funding base, their reputation, and more heavily tied to trying to convince the public. Accordingly, it is really not surprising that there have been billions of dollars on the pro-alarmism side while yet even Greenpeace could only find a relatively paltry few tens of millions of dollars ever given to the skeptical side.
Add to that how most of the media loves scare stories for attracting attention even while having little scientific literacy (like the journalists not knowing the difference between ionizing and non-ionizing radiation who made the stories about cell phones versus bees only for effects to turn out to be from a natural fungus).
A claim that hurricanes have skyrocketed from global warming is an exciting news story.
A boring but valid observation that there has been nil overall rise in hurricane frequency (if looked at globally avoiding tricks like cherry-picking a couple decades of the North Atlantic while ignoring decline simultaneously elsewhere from weather fluctuations) is not what tends to make a news story at all.
The (utterly inaccurate) hockey stick is exciting. The following is not:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/ArcticIce/Images/arctic_temp_trends_rt.gif
http://www.nsf.gov/news/mmg/media/images/monsoon1_h.jpg
No different than Tides Canada astroturfed LeadNow.ca, NotOurBudget.ca, OpenMedia.ca, The Tyee and so many more…
An old concept, but this reminds me of the tactics of: “The People’s Front for the Liberation of ……………..”
The end justifies the means – lies, distortions, half truths, libel and threats are just part of the deal.
Henry Clark says:
April 16, 2012 at 9:19 pm
Such as the average utility company actually does not generally have their survival dependent on the outcome on the AGW debate one way or another; if electricity prices rise, they would just pass them on to consumers.
Each state has a Board of Public Utilities, or the equivalent, which rules on proposed price increases. The boards are political animals and, if public (i.e., “voter”) outcry puts pressure on the politicos who hold the purse strings, they will *not* approve a rate increase, regardless of how legitimate the utility company’s justification.
McCarthyism is alive and well it seems.
REP, obviously just a lame attempt to parody skeptics by channelling Gen. Ripper from Dr. Strangelove.