Roger Pielke Jr. calls out Joe Romm explicity

Liar, Liar (song)
Liar, Liar (song) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Pants on fire and all that – but well deserved. Kudos to Pielke Jr, for speaking out.

http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2012/05/joe-romm-is-liar.html

He says it isn’t the first time. It will be interesting to see Joe Romm’s reaction spin to this charge.

It seems that Heartland has listed Roger Pielke Jr. as one of their experts here:

http://heartland.org/roger-pielke

But from Pielke’s tone and description, I think both Heartland and Romm have erred.

As I see it, Romm put a question mark on the end of his post, suggesting he’s unsure…but went ahead with the story anyway and used the question mark as his “out”.

I think what Pielke Jr. is saying is that he has no professional relationship with Heartland, and on that point I believe him. He’s never been to one of the conferences that I know of. Nether has Pielke Sr. I think Heartland has listed a number of people in that page that aren’t necessarily part of any official relationship.

Lately, much of the climate debate has devolved into personal attacks/smears and tit for tat infowars. It’s not doing anyone any good.

UPDATE: In May 2011, RP Jr. wrote this about Romm:

It is long overdue for the environmental community to start pushing back on Romm as he continues to stain their entire enterprise. His lies and smear tactics, which are broadly embraced and condoned, are making enemies out of friends and opponents out of fellow travelers.  Vigorous debate is welcome and healthy.  Lies and character assassination not so much.

I concur. Romm and the whole ThinkProgress team use poisonous tactics, but that’s part of the MO for the Soros funded center for American Progress. On the plus side, most reasonable people with critical thinking skills can see right through these guys, so they tend to turn off the very people they are trying to reach, leaving ThinkProgress left with the bereft.

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Alvin
May 9, 2012 5:16 pm

Unfortunately, Pielke Jr.takes their bait. Now they have a sound bite/quote saying not only is he not an expert for Heartland, but “I have absolutely no relationship with Heartland — never have, never will. Period”.
More food for the attack dogs to futher marginalize Heartland. Shame.

Ian W
May 9, 2012 5:19 pm

From the first comment on http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2012/05/joe-romm-is-liar.html it would appear that Heartland are listingRoger Pielke Jr. as one of their experts.
There would appear to be a fair number of loose canons around at the moment.
REPLY: What Pielke is saying is that he has no professional relationship with Heartland, and on that point I believe him. He’s never been to one of the conferences that I know of. Nether has Pielke Sr. I think Heartland has listed a number of people in that page that aren’t necessarily part of any official relationship. – Anthony

wayne
May 9, 2012 5:30 pm

“Lately, much of the climate debate has devolved into personal attacks/smears and tit for tat infowars. It’s not doing anyone any good.”
Was it not bound to happen as the CAGW / AGW false hypothesis collapsed?

kim2ooo
May 9, 2012 5:39 pm

I’d have just kept them guessing…Just my thoughts

Phil C
May 9, 2012 5:47 pm

I think Heartland has listed a number of people in that page that aren’t necessarily part of any official relationship.
Must just be more of that “battle fatigue” right?
REPLY: Go ahead, spin away, make my day! – Anthony

James Ard
May 9, 2012 5:51 pm

Tit for tat is a heck of a lot better than it was than before, when there no tat was allowed.

kim2ooo
May 9, 2012 5:53 pm

Ha ha ha ha…Maybe Heartland should list Romm, Jones, Briffa, Mann, Schmidt et al…..snicklers

James Ard
May 9, 2012 5:56 pm

Moderator, please give up on making sense of that and I’ll try to do better.

May 9, 2012 6:03 pm

It is also possible that the page is a listing of the people that Heartland recommends or trusts and considers competent authorities in their field. Sort of a “we trust these people” listing.
Lots of web sites list resources that they consider trustworthy.
If you use the filter options on the right hand side of the page Pielke comes back as a “global warming expert”, if you search under “experts” he does not get selected. The “Policy adviser” does not return any experts.
I don’t think the intent was to imply a professional relationship, but to list them as people who are respected in their fields.
Larry
REPLY: Heartland should make that clear, so as to not give ammo to Romm types, of course next, I’ll expect Romm will claim they are hypocritical because they have the color green in the Heartland web page header. – Anthony

kim2ooo
May 9, 2012 6:21 pm

Larry Ledwick (hotrod ) says:
May 9, 2012 at 6:03 pm
Good Catch!
+1

u.k.(us)
May 9, 2012 6:22 pm

I think Heartland has listed a number of people in that page that aren’t necessarily part of any official relationship. – Anthony
======
You are possibly way out of your depth, Anthony.
Start reinforcing the flanks, and bring up the reserves.

Phil C
May 9, 2012 6:24 pm

REPLY: Go ahead, spin away, make my day! – Anthony
I’m not spinning anything; I’m just reminding you that you still haven’t properly criticized Heartland for their offensive billboard. And here it is, days later, by which time the “battle fatigue” should have worn off and you should be able to let your readers know that what Heartland did was wrong, was over the top and clearly offensive, and that Heartland should issue a formal apology to the thousands of honest scientists who do valuable, legitimate climate research, that they just so happen to disagree with. Instead, you choose to call Joe Romm a liar. I’ve read his post. Can you quote verbatim here anything he’s written that is a lie? No, you can’t. So you must just be suffering from “battle fatigue.” Time to rotate off the front lines, Anthony!
REPLY: Excellent spin, you’ve made my day. And, like Romm, you haven’t a clue, only your memes. – Anthony

May 9, 2012 6:29 pm

Phil C says:
“…you that you still haven’t properly criticized Heartland for their offensive billboard.”
Phil C, you do not understand. Heartland told the truth. You just don’t like the truth.
The fact is that Ted Kazynski, Al Gore, Joe Romm, Fidel Castro, Charles Manson and you all believe the same nonsense.
Heartland did nothing wrong. It told the truth. If you don’t like hearing the truth, tough noogies.

kim2ooo
May 9, 2012 6:31 pm

Phil C says:
May 9, 2012 at 6:24 pm
“Instead, you choose to call Joe Romm a liar.”
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Reference please

Camburn
May 9, 2012 6:35 pm

Phil C:
I am not Mr. Watts, but I certainly know that Mr. Romm is a liar. I have tried to correct him numerous times, but somehow my post never gets posted.
Now I don’t bother to go to his site since he posts so many falsehoods and is not man enough to allow someone to show where he is flat out wrong. Why bother with idiots?

Tom
May 9, 2012 6:37 pm

The Heartland site says “Heartland Experts”
And then proceeds to talk about Pielke.
http://heartland.org/roger-pielke

kim2ooo
May 9, 2012 6:38 pm

If you work really hard…they will give you training pants…and then big girl panties

May 9, 2012 6:39 pm

Tom,
So what? Read what hotrod said above: “Lots of web sites list resources that they consider trustworthy.” Got it, now?

James Ard
May 9, 2012 6:43 pm

I had twenty hours in a car with my alarmist sister this week. It turned out that her big concern was water in Manhattan. Freaking elitists. But, she’s been schooled, thanks to you, Anthony.

Tom
May 9, 2012 6:59 pm

@ Smokey;
So to be clear, you are endorsing that in order to properly understand what Heartland is saying you need to interpret the page after going through convoluted and inconsistent navigation and then cross-correlate on the “experts” personal blog to properly understand the affiliation?
It would seem to make a lot more sense for Pielke to call out Heartland for being misleading…

Tom
May 9, 2012 7:07 pm

Anthony says “Lately, much of the climate debate has devolved into personal attacks/smears and tit for tat infowars”
Interesting. Given than the majority of comments here tend to make personal attacks on people that accept the science I wonder what might be done here leading by example?
REPLY: Great, I’ll round up all the comments like that you’ve made here, including the ones under fake names, and you can critique them – Cheers, Anthony

Dave N
May 9, 2012 7:16 pm

Romm habitually hides lies behind question marks.
Yawn.

May 9, 2012 7:19 pm

Thanks Anthony, Romm knows he has erred, as he has updated his post twice now, and the title as well. He has also visited my blog trying to explain his efforts. I suggest that your commenters visit his site and (politely please) let him know that such dishonorable behavior is not acceptable — on any side of this debate. Thanks.

May 9, 2012 7:23 pm

Tom,
Apparently Anthony knows you are a multi-screen-name sock puppet. Given that, don’t you see your glaring hypocrisy? You get to comment here all you want, under different names, while skeptics are moderated out of existence by Romm, RealClimate, and the rest of their ilk.
Personally, I do not attack “people that accept the science”. I attack pseudo-science, and the climate charlatans who hide out from debate. So go lead by example yourself, and tell your boy Romm to start posting skeptics’ comments. He won’t, of course, because he would quickly lose the debate. So he censors.
“The science” means science according to the scientific method, which requires full transparency. Wake me when the charlatans decide to be transparent. Until then, they’re preaching anti-science.

May 9, 2012 7:25 pm

A quibble:
“Lately, much of the climate debate has devolved into personal attacks/smears
and tit for tat infowars. It’s not doing anyone any good.”
The Climategate emails would indicate that personal attacks/smears were a modus operandi of the CAGW alarmists for years. It did the CAGW side a lot of good in that it has delayed the reckoning for years.
Regards,
Steamboat Jack (Jon Jewett’s evil twin)

Tom
May 9, 2012 7:28 pm

If you show me any personal attacks I have made I’ll gladly retract them Anthony, will you do the same? I will not, per your request, use the “D” term.

dp
May 9, 2012 7:39 pm

I have to believe one of Joe Romm or Roger Pielke Jr. Sometimes life throws you curve balls. Do I go with the serial attack dog or the honest broker?
/sarc

May 9, 2012 7:42 pm

Those are meant to be experts that the Heartland recommends. I have emailed them some recommendations on clarifying this.

DeNihilist
May 9, 2012 7:52 pm

Still thought Heartland should have put the Dali Llama up on their billboard instead of the uni bomber. It doesn’t matter who believes what in science, only that we keep on digging.

Layne Blanchard
May 9, 2012 7:54 pm

Heartland has nothing to apologize for.
“The Science” is short on science and long on Marxist activism. Of course, that isn’t everyone in the field. Some just follow along. Some don’t want to rock the boat. Some are not terribly competent. Some are good people focused on their own narrow study. But “The Science” is corrupt. Make that bankrupt.

May 9, 2012 8:01 pm

Smokey says:
May 9, 2012 at 7:23 pm
…. I attack pseudo-science, and the climate charlatans who hide out from debate….
===================================
Personally, I prefer the term “sciecobabble” to “pseudo-science”. These guys are nuts.

u.k.(us)
May 9, 2012 8:05 pm

Roger Pielke, Jr. says:
May 9, 2012 at 7:19 pm
I suggest that your commenters visit his site and (politely please) let him know that such dishonorable behavior is not acceptable — on any side of this debate. Thanks.
====================
OK, dishonorable behavior is not acceptable, but must never be spoken of.
Does that work ?
FYI, never say, “your commenters”.
You’re just asking for a shit storm.

May 9, 2012 8:25 pm

Layne Blanchard says:
May 9, 2012 at 7:54 pm
“Heartland has nothing to apologize for.”
That is exactly right. None of the alarmist arm-waving by “Tom” and his ilk has yet demonstrated that Heartland did anything wrong.
Their deceptive purpose is to take the spotlight off of the unethical Peter Gleick, and the serial liar Joe Romm. Tom isn’t fooling anybody.

Tom Deutsch
May 9, 2012 8:38 pm

@ Smokey, that response sure looks like topic avoidance with a heavy dose of personal attack/smears.
So to be clear, you are endorsing that in order to properly understand what Heartland is saying you need to interpret the page after going through convoluted and inconsistent navigation and then cross-correlate on the “experts” personal blog to properly understand the affiliation?

May 9, 2012 8:44 pm

So to be clear, you are endorsing that in order to properly understand what Heartland is saying you need to interpret the page after going through convoluted and inconsistent navigation and then cross-correlate on the “experts” personal blog to properly understand the affiliation?

No you are supposed to assume everything on the Heartland webpage means, “funded by the Koch Brothers when it states no such thing”.

May 9, 2012 8:47 pm

Tom Deutsch,
Apparently your tactic is to blame others for your failure to understand what Heartland is saying.
And as usual, you are avoiding discussing the plain fact that Romm is a liar, and Gleick is a thief. Nothing you can say about Heartland comes close to those ugly facts.
Heartland has done nothing wrong, despite your desperate efforts to find fault. If you can’t figure out their web page, that is due to your inadequacy, not theirs.

jorgekafkazar
May 9, 2012 8:51 pm

Is it possible that the Heartland website manager meant instead to include someone else whose name happens to be Roger Pielke?

u.k.(us)
May 9, 2012 8:55 pm

Tom Deutsch says:
May 9, 2012 at 8:38 pm
================
To be clear, you don’t [snip – language ~mod]

Tom
May 9, 2012 9:20 pm

@ Smokey, yet more personal attack/smears. I thought we agreed that lowers the conversation, no?
So just to be extra clear, you are doubling down (or is it tripling, I got lost in all the personal attacks, sorry) that in order to properly understand what Heartland is saying you need to interpret the page after going through convoluted and inconsistent navigation and then cross-correlate on the “experts” personal blog to properly understand the affiliation?

May 9, 2012 9:44 pm

Tom,
Once again, I cannot help it if you lack the reading comprehension to understand Heartland’s website. I have no problem with it, sorry you do. And once again, you’re trying to steer the discussion away from the article: Romm’s lying and Gleick’s theft. Try to stay on topic.

Tom
May 9, 2012 10:01 pm

@ Smokey. “Try to stay on topic”
Um, nothing above on Gleick so it seems you are off topic.
So just to be extra clear, you are quadrupling down that in order to properly understand what Heartland is saying you need to interpret the page after going through convoluted and inconsistent navigation and then cross-correlate on the “experts” personal blog to properly understand the affiliation?

Gilbert
May 9, 2012 10:18 pm

Sometimes a question isn’t really a question at all.
You know, like asking someone publicly whether or not not they have stopped beating……well you get the idea.

u.k.(us)
May 9, 2012 10:28 pm

Tom says:
May 9, 2012 at 10:01 pm
o just to be extra clear,
————————-
We can play this game all night, to what end.

dalyplanet
May 9, 2012 10:51 pm

Joe Romm is now “so far out there” that ignoring him seems the proper thing to do..

gnomish
May 9, 2012 10:57 pm

romm sure knows how to pull a string and make a person react to him as if he were important. how did he get so much influence? he seems to know how to make puppets and have them dance. sure keeps them off balance and neutralized as any kind of threat to the agenda – which has nothing to do with science, of course. gossip replaces addressing substantive issues.
what other practical significance is there to this whole episode?

John Whitman
May 9, 2012 11:27 pm

We are missing HI’s explanation of why they seemed to imply Pielke Jr was their expert?
HI, please provide your side of this story.
John

John Whitman
May 9, 2012 11:30 pm

Romm is my do not go to guy.
John

M Courtney
May 10, 2012 2:32 am

This is smoke and mirrors. There are (at least) three aspects of the AGW debate.
1) The science
2) The politics
3) The economics
The attacks on Heartland by their opponents (and themselves recently) are al part of 2 – the politics.
The aim of all the activists on both sides is to win on 3 – the economics.
To do that they must win (or at least not lose) on 1 – the science.
And the science is not backing up the belief in the end of the world. The predictions are not coming true. And people are beginning to notice. This is a very inconvenient truth.
Answer: IPCC 6. That must be rammed full of alarmist diatribe (it’s worse than we thought, we’re all going to die, panic!) dressed up as research. But to get there the activists need less scrutiny on the weakness of the recent papers.
So smoke and mirrors.
Wave red rags at the bulls to get them running after the politics and you can publish the bull-waste behind.

M Courtney
May 10, 2012 2:45 am

Typo: I meant IPCC 5 not 6. The 5th assessment report which is due shortly.

mycroft
May 10, 2012 2:51 am

Tom
you don’t by any chance post on the TWO site do you?
A UK weather forum.

Otter
May 10, 2012 3:29 am

Tom~ I am interested to know, if you don’t mind, just what you think HI should do, to settle this situation with Pielke Jr?

May 10, 2012 4:14 am

REPLY: What Pielke is saying is that he has no professional relationship with Heartland, and on that point I believe him.
I clicked the link ( http://heartland.org/roger-pielke ) and my first impression was that Pielke *was* in their stable of experts. However, nowhere in the short bio does it list any connection with HI at all, which it surely would have if he were connected to it, even if only a dues-paying member. My impression is that HI meant to say, “HI considers Roger Pielke, Jr., an expert in his field.” but for aesthetic reasons, decided *not* to do that in the header. It would have made more sense to run him in a blogroll on the sidebar, broken down much as the Lukewarmers, Politicals, Pro-AGW, and Skeptical blocs are here at WUWT.
HI flubbed the dub through ambiguity, but it does not explicitly claim that Pielke is on staff.

May 10, 2012 4:24 am

Tom says:
May 9, 2012 at 9:20 pm
@ Smokey — So just to be extra clear, you are doubling down (or is it tripling, I got lost in all the personal attacks, sorry) that in order to properly understand what Heartland is saying you need to interpret the page after going through convoluted and inconsistent navigation and then cross-correlate on the “experts” personal blog to properly understand the affiliation?

Odd — I didn’t have to go through all those gyrations. Did you right-click or left-click on the links?
And “just to be extra clear,” Smokey said nothing of the sort..

Gary Kerkin
May 10, 2012 4:24 am

I’m not sure what to think of some of the comments here except, perhaps to remind you of a quote from Bertrand Russell:
“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.”

John Greenfraud
May 10, 2012 5:38 am

Romm and the other fanatics see themselves as saviors of the earth, all is justified in their world. Lie, cheat, and steal is just another day at the office for a CAGW progressive. I, for one, intend to keep kicking until the CAGW beast is dead. Appeasement never works on fanatics, they have no honor. More power to Pielke, can I loan you a steel toe boot?

Tom
May 10, 2012 6:09 am

@ Bill Tuttle;
Smokey said “Apparently your tactic is to blame others for your failure to understand what Heartland is saying
Bill said “I clicked the link ( http://heartland.org/roger-pielke ) and my first impression was that Pielke *was* in their stable of experts.”
Apparently it is misleading / confusing, and you do have to cross-correlate to arrive at the correct understanding. Now why would they make you do that when it could all be resolved with a simple word or two if they were interested in accuracy?

May 10, 2012 6:17 am

M Courtney says: May 10, 2012 at 2:32 am
This is smoke and mirrors.
… Wave red rags at the bulls to get them running after the politics and you can publish the bull-waste behind.

Well said.
Well, I too care about the science being put back on track.
My current conclusions are that the very foundations of Climate Science are questionable, even those foundations that most climate skeptics accept, and I did too, earlier on. But to challenge them, I need to go fairly deeply into four things in particular:-
Scientific Method and its appropriate practice
The Second Law of Thermodynamics and its history
Current experimental evidence and the state of play re theoretical backup, comprehension, etc
Sticking-points all round, myself included

and until I’ve done that I’m staying fairly quiet. So this is just f.y.i. without further comments.

May 10, 2012 6:32 am

Tom is still trying to hijack this thread, which is about the lying and theft comitted by Tom’s heroes. If I were in Tom’s shoes, I would also be very uncomfortable discussing the total lack of ethics and honesty endemic to the alarmist crowd.

Tom
May 10, 2012 6:40 am

Anthony says “Lately, much of the climate debate has devolved into personal attacks/smears and tit for tat infowars. It’s not doing anyone any good.”
Smokey says “total lack of ethics and honesty endemic to the alarmist crowd.”
So, to be clear, you are disagreeing with Anthony’s (important in my opinion) observation above in choosing to make personal attacks rather than discuss that Heartland was confusing even to people familiar to the actors involved?

May 10, 2012 6:48 am

Tom:
I am stating facts, not “opinion”. Until/unless the alarmist crowd [which includes you] speaks out forcefully against the actions of Peter Gleick and the lies of Joe Romm, like skeptics did when Heartland ran their billboard, then you are condoning those actions and lies by your silence.

Jeff
May 10, 2012 6:52 am

Obviously Romm is a sleazeball, etc. but if Roger Pielke Jr feels as he does should contact Heartland and have them remove him. I’m not sure if he has any legal recourse but he seems to make it clear that he has no relationship with H.I. (and does not want one) yet hasn’t seemed bothered by the fact that they at least make it appear like he supports them/they rely on him/etc. It lists him as a “Heartland Expert” for crying out loud, easy for commoner to make a mistake here, though Romm obviously is just doing his normal mudslinging.

Tom
May 10, 2012 7:15 am

@ Smokey – waiting on your attack/smear on Jeff above. Or, do you reserve that for people who dare question what is posted here. And if that is the case are not engaging in the very behavior that is anti-science that your rail against?

ferd berple
May 10, 2012 7:20 am

Smokey says:
May 9, 2012 at 7:23 pm
I attack pseudo-science, and the climate charlatans who hide out from debate.
Spot on. Real Climate for example. Shown time and time again to be cherry pickers. Science perverted to promote a cause.
Try and actually have a debate on the science, and they will censor your questions. They won’t even allows anyone to see the question. Completely opposite to the scientific method. We had a recent example of this on Twitter.
That is how you can separate scientists from pseudo-scientists. The pseudo-scientists are afraid of the truth and will fight to the end to hide the facts. They will censor your questions, they will evade FOI, they will not publish their data so their results can be verified.
In all other fields of science, if you can’t recreate the results, you can’t trust the results. In climate science, so long as the results show that humans are bad, that industrialization is destroying the earth, the results are accepted without question.
That isn’t science, it is environmentalism using the appearance of science to justify its beliefs. Not much different than the church 500 years ago, with the inquisition and excommunication to prevent new findings from reaching the general population.
Environmentalism is big business these days, with hundreds of millions in funding at risk. These folks will fight to the bitter end to protect this. Truth went out the window long ago.

Tom
May 10, 2012 7:36 am

@ Fred et al – so you are going on the record that cherry picking is inherently misleading and unscientific?
Can we all agree, that in the interest of valid science, we will all here roundly condemn and reject any instance of cherry picking data?
I believe that would be quite a reasonable thing to all agree to and hard to argue against, no?

themrkia
May 10, 2012 8:32 am

So…Tom…to be clear…you agree that the folks at RealClimate routinely censor questions, cherry pick data, evade FOI requests and pervert science to promote a cause.
Thanks for clearing that up.

gnomish
May 10, 2012 10:01 am

look – heartland’s deliberately ambiguous name dropping was meant to make them seem more important and authoritative than they are. face that fact. there is no need to rationalize their attempt to glue somebody else’s reputation to their own cv.
and romm is a professional troll who spotted this and has everybody squirming – why to squirm? flak when one is over the target, obviously.
all this shovelling to feed a troll makes fools out of the shovellers.
now, i’m happy i broke the climate, but i’m not happy to see my brothers in arms behaving like stooges.
tom wins his point. smokey shamed himself. that’s self evident. it will take a day and a half and 10 thousand words of the lamest denial to obfuscate that – and it still won’t work cuz truth is truth.

Legatus
May 10, 2012 10:18 am

On the plus side, most reasonable people with critical thinking skills can see right through these guys
Which is to say, not many people today can see right through these guys. Face it, with todays education, children are deliberatly not taught any critical thinking skills, I don’t think there is even a token attempt to teach it. Heck, I am not even sure if they teach The Scientific Method in science class anymore. There might be a few colleges that teach something like it, but I would not bet even on that.
Thus, if you present reasons why one should not believe in global warming, even simple and easy to understand ones like that fact that it is not warming, do not be suprised if many people are not convinced (if it can even be called convinced without reason).
The tactic, rally the mob, then burn the books.

KnR
May 10, 2012 10:18 am

Do not feed the Troll.
There is simply no answer you can give Tom that does lead to more questions, or to them asking the same ones. They’re not interested in ‘results as they are’ but as they ‘should be ‘, which is after all the standard approach of the Team in the name of ‘the cause ‘

Nick Shaw
May 10, 2012 10:45 am

“most reasonable people with critical thinking skills”? Anthony, you assume too much.
There are not many people who fit that description hanging out at Think Progress, Media Matters or Daily Kos.
There is no critical thinking involved with most of their readership.
Parroting of talking points.
That’s about it.

woodNfish
May 10, 2012 10:50 am

“…leaving ThinkProgress left with the bereft.”
I think you need an editor here Anthony. That clause makes no sense because it is an improper use of “bereft”. Just trying to help. Feel free to delete this if you like.

May 10, 2012 10:52 am

KnR,
You’re right. Tom is trolling.
Next, I don’t understand what “gnomish” means about “shaming” in his incoherent post. Shamed?? WTF? I stand by everything I have written: Heartland told the truth. Romm is, and always has been a liar. And Tom has posted nothing of substance. I’m not ashamed to point any of that out.
Tom is taking advantage of the light moderation here by hijacking the thread, asking incessant questions, but never answering the questions that others ask. If Tom thinks being able to comment here as much as he wants is a good thing, then I challenge him to post a series of demands on Romm’s blog, on RealClimate, on Skeptical Pseudo-Science and on similar alarmist blogs, demanding that they start to allow skeptics to post there the same way, instead of their usual heavy censoring of skeptics’ comments.
Finally, I have no problem with Jeff. Tom is the problem; he won’t have a conversation, he demands that his questions must be answered, but he avoids anyone else’s questions. That’s trolling.

PeterB in Indianapolis
May 10, 2012 10:56 am

,
I find it really funny that every single post you make ends with a question mark. Do you really have that much trouble interpreting the posts of others?
Oh wait… that ended in a question mark… my bad!
More to the point though – were the Heartland billboards truthful? Sure. Were they a good idea? No. Also, if they wish to list Dr. Pielke Jr. as a person whom they respect as an expert in the field, fine, but they should do so clearly and in a way that does not make it appear (falsely) that he is in any way ASSOCIATED with The Heartland Institute.
Heartland got what they wanted recently if they simply wanted even more publicity after the Gleik affair, but if I were running Heartland, I would have done a much better job of seeking POSITIVE publicity rather than NEGATIVE publicity. It seems these days that organizations think that ANY publicity is good publicity, but I don’t share that opinion. Heartland should be seeking the respect of honest skeptics, and shouldn’t care whatsoever what the alarmists/warmists think of them, as it is patently obvious that regardless of what Heartland does, the proponents of AGW will never respect Heartland. The great gaffe by Heartland with both the billboards and the distinct lack of clarity on their website when it comes to experts is that in both cases they risk losing respect among the sanest of the skeptics. What would be so difficult in listing website links of experts that they trust under a heading such as: “Trusted climate expert blogroll” or something of the sort? In that way, it would be pretty darn clear that Heartland trusted those experts, but those experts did not necessarily have any connection with Heartland itself. I have visited the webpage, and the way they did things, that is NOT abundantly clear.
I know that compared to the “climate scientists”, Heartland has a shoestring budget, but I think they could do a lot better when it comes to ad campaigns and website design IMHO. Their main focus should be on solid, scientific-method-based science which refutes the shoddy, unscientific “findings” and models of the “climate scientists”. I know much of the public would find that a lot more boring than unabomber billboards, but a strong case built on fundamental science will ultimately be a lot more powerful than publicity-seeking by questionable means.

Mike Lewis
May 10, 2012 10:58 am

Roger Pielke no longer appears on the Experts page at Heartland.

May 10, 2012 12:13 pm

Tom says:
May 10, 2012 at 7:36 am
Can we all agree, that in the interest of valid science, we will all here roundly condemn and reject any instance of cherry picking data?

…aaaaaaand…
Tom says:
May 10, 2012 at 6:09 am
@ Bill Tuttle; Apparently it is misleading / confusing, and you do have to cross-correlate to arrive at the correct understanding. Now why would they make you do that when it could all be resolved with a simple word or two if they were interested in accuracy?

Since you cherry-picked my statements, I expect you to roundly condemn and reject all of your previous comments.
Kidding — I actually expect you to continue trolling.

May 10, 2012 12:20 pm

Tom says:
May 10, 2012 at 6:40 am
Smokey says “total lack of ethics and honesty endemic to the alarmist crowd.”
So, to be clear, you are disagreeing with Anthony’s (important in my opinion) observation above in choosing to make personal attacks rather than discuss that Heartland was confusing even to people familiar to the actors involved?

He wasn’t making a personal attack, he was stating an empirical observation.

Tom
May 10, 2012 12:25 pm

Now why would Heartland go and remove clear, accurate and non-deceptive factual information. Most curious…most curious indeed.

May 10, 2012 12:28 pm

We are missing HI’s explanation of why they seemed to imply Pielke Jr was their expert?

They didn’t they implied they were recommended experts.

May 10, 2012 12:32 pm

Tom, Now why would Heartland go and remove clear, accurate and non-deceptive factual information. Most curious…most curious indeed.

Please quote and cite where the experts page states they are affiliated in any way with the Heartland Institute. Surely someone like yourself who is so sure of their position can produce this information?

Tom
May 10, 2012 4:38 pm

Poptech says “they implied”
implied;
Verb:
Strongly suggest the truth or existence of (something not expressly stated)..

May 10, 2012 4:57 pm

Tom you still cannot quote and cite where the experts page states they are affiliated in any way with the Heartland Institute?

Tom
May 10, 2012 8:53 pm

Poptech says “they implied”
implied;
Verb:
Strongly suggest the truth or existence of (something not expressly stated)..
To to summarize, it was so clear, so utterly free from deception, such a paragon of full disclosure that Pielke was compelled to write “I have absolutely no relationship with Heartland — never have, never will. Period”
Seems to me that if it was clear none of this would have happened. But it did. Because of Heartland was deliberately far from clear.

May 10, 2012 10:45 pm

Tom you already stated that definition and made that point, now please answer the question,
Can you quote and cite where the expert’s page states they are affiliated in any way with the Heartland Institute?

May 16, 2012 7:32 pm

The Heartland Institute has updated their [url=http://heartland.org/experts]Expert[/url] page,
“The persons identified here are Heartland staff, managing editors, senior fellows, and policy advisors (who are unpaid volunteers), as well as other experts not affiliated with Heartland but who we recommend as reliable sources of research and commentary.