Guest post by Christopher Horner
Tonight, PBS’s axe-grinding vehicle “Frontline” is running what promises to be a tantrum against people who seek debate over the global warming agenda, and scrutiny of claims underpinning it. It appears that you have me to thank for it or, to paraphrase a politician, I did build that. How this occurred is itself a story.
Tonight’s program is promoted as centering on Prof. Andrew Dessler of Texas A&M University. It is part of an effort to fight back against a series of requests for email on Dessler’s taxpayer-funded account, one of several I made under the federal and state freedom of information laws, seeking how publicly funded academics use their positions and resources.
Part of a coordinated effort to stop exposure of the larger coordinated effort, it is a component of what I call in my new book, The Liberal War on Transparency.
Our objective in these FOIA requests was to compile the context to the “Climategate” scandal, which, activist academics central to its revelations assured us, was really an out-of-context misrepresentation. In so doing, I merely replicated an invention of the global warming industry. Which makes it even more strange that the same people think obtaining the supposed “exoneration” is a very bad idea.
Among them are the media and environmentalist establishments, including the Union of Concerned Scientists which became particularly exercised, mobilizing left-wing groups to urge universities not to satisfy our requests for public documents. I learned one reason: UCS is coordinating publicly funded activist academics and bureaucrats, activist media, and media consultants (indeed, it also seems they were likely behind tonight’s show).
This revelation came in records I obtained from Texas A&M. These exposed a sophisticated UCS operation to assist activist academics and other government employees as authorities for promoting UCS’s agenda. This includes “moot-courting” congressional hearings with a team of UCS staff, and directing the taxpayers’ servants to outside PR consultants — apparently pro bono or else on UCS’s dime. Keep this last point in mind.
As I recently exposed, they also show the New York Times reporter who covers the environment, science and specifically the global warming issue, Justin Gillis, as an activist in the shared cause.
Gillis’s front-page item laboring to undermine MIT’s Dr. Richard Lindzen prompted my request to A&M for information reflecting how Dessler and activist whom Gillis quoted was using his taxpayer-funded position.
Our requests caused much wailing and gnashing of teeth among academia and its affiliated societies, the Washington Post, and the American Constitution Society. They joined UCS to attest that these sacrosanct exchanges of ideas would be fatally chilled if not granted an unlegislated exemption from freedom of information laws.
Now, recall that the Texas A&M email production shows the academics actually forwarding their email discussions outside their circle, for example to New York Times reporters, whom they also copied on the very exchanges they otherwise insist represent an intellectual circle that must remain free from violation by prying, nonacademic eyes.
Agitated Guardian scribe Suzanne Goldenberg emailed me within hours of Texas A&M receiving a request for Dessler email to or from her, suggesting that my use of FOIA to obtain public records was illegitimate and abusive because I am not unbiased. Seriously.
Also following my Texas A&M request, a “Frontline” producer contacted me claiming to want to discuss our FOIA litigation. She declined to send me whatever questions she might have; the obsession was to get tape of me to edit for tonight’s outburst. Being currently involved in only the seeking University of Virginia’s Climategate records, I referred her to lead counsel.
It turned out she actually wanted to complain about the Texas A&M requests, and one of Texas Tech University seeking a professor and climate activist’s correspondence about a chapter she was writing for Newt Gingrich’s boook (emails the professor who opposed providing me the emails had already provided to a Los Angeles Times reporter; but please, these are top-secret scientific discussions release of which would chill academic discourse!)
How two otherwise fairly obscure Texas activists would become the subject of interest to “Frontline” brings us back to UCS.
One of the emails produced by Texas A&M shows the activist Dessler contacting a D.C. media consultant for advice, Richard Ades of Prism Public Affairs, “a strategic communications firm that operates at the intersection of public policy and the media” according to its website. Dessler informs Ades he was referred by Aaron Huertas of UCS.
UCSs role is clear but the role of public resources in their program now must be elaborated upon. These records we seek are public records. They are precisely the sort that “Frontline”, the Guardian, UCS, Dessler, and the whole host of this week’s wailers had no problem with being sought by Greenpeace. They will reveal how taxpayer-funded academic activists use public resources to advance their agendas. And that is what frightens them.
Christopher Horner is author of The Liberal War on Transparency: Confessions of a Freedom of Information “Criminal” (Threshold, October 2012).
There is a host of self-centred and greedy ulterior motives different people have for supporting the AGW paradigm. Some of these folks are no doubt sincere, while others are merely scoundrels.
1- For researchers, once a paradigm becomes popular and dominant, it is career limiting to oppose it.
2- If the climate is presented as something about which governments can make policies, then government money will flow for research. If climate is something that we cannot affect, funding is not going to be as forthcoming.
3- Plus of course it gives researchers a good feeling to imagine that they’re working to ‘save the world’ instead of, say, developing a new scent for feminine hygiene products.
4- Environmentalists see carbon emission control as a means to reduce real pollutants like NOx, SO2, Hg, etc. as a side effect.
5- Luddites see carbon strangulation as a way of dismantling the industrial economies to force everyone to a much reduced subsistence.
6- ‘Personal isolationists’ try to use AGW as a way to eliminate big utility companies, with power generated at home from wind, solar, or even car batteries, and even sold to the local grid at retail (or higher) rates.
7- EU trade isolationists see carbon regulation as a way of increasing the energy cost, and thus decreasing the competitiveness, of North American economies _vis a vis_ EU ones.
8- Opportunities to use carbon emissions as pretexts to block or heavily tariff imports abound, thus degrading international trade even further.
9- Local trade isolationists like the idea of overseas products becoming more expensive, and if they can’t do that by punitive tariffs and quotas, they hope to do so by artificially driving up shipping costs.
10- Various people see Kyoto-type agreements as a way of transferring wealth from developed economies to lesser ones, as our one-time Liberal cabinet minister Stewart once claimed.
11- Some also envision carbon strangulation as a pretext for involving governments deeply into the economy, via direct and indirect subsidies for energy alternatives that can claim to be ‘green’. Naturally, those who are involved and invested in such industries have their own greed factor.
12- Believers in Big Government also love the idea of sending governments even more of our money under any pretext, and use carbon taxes as a way to transfer even more money to people in lower income levels.
13- Some politicians see taking ‘the west’ off oil as a means of removing the dependence the US in particular has on politically uncertain sources.
14- Other politicans see ‘cap & trade’ or other quota management as a way to direct corruption to their buddies and relatives.
15- Nuclear energy proponents see carbon strangulation as a way to promote nuclear power.
16- Some people imagine that energy cost reductions will magically pay for, and even squeeze profit from, expensive carbon control technologies whose payback times are actually measured (when they aren’t just dead costs) in decades.
17- Opportunistic “businessmen” see the panic of the masses as an opportunity to solicit donations to so-called “non-profit” organizations or to operate carbon credit companies in order to enrich themselves financially.
18- Financial trading corporations like Goldman Sachs see carbon trading as an opportunity to generate a new financial bubble out of an inexistant commodity (carbon credits) with which to justify huge profits and staggering executive bonuses.
19- In politics it is generally held far more important to be consistent than it is to be right. Lies and errors about warming are thus propagated further, instead of being squelched, in order to bolster the political optics.
20- Some people propose deliberately crushing economic growth to be an improvement over what they think will happen if we let growth proceed naturally.
21- And there are some who are actually sincere, who desperately want to believe that they can by sacrificing (or by forcing the rest of us to sacrifice) contribute to saving the world. But just because you make a sacrifice to superstition doesn’t mean that your AGW deity is going to come through for you.
22- The UN sees carbon credits as an opportunity to create a tax base for itself and a steady source of income to spend on… whatever.
GlynnMhor says: October 23, 2012 at 5:04 pm
[A number of excellent points, including:]
Indeed. And, while the new, improved (not) “gold standard” IPCC dutifully does its part by continuing to ignore its own rules, yet another UN body, the “Conference of the Parties (COP 11) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)” has been holding a confab in Hyderabad, India (attended by no less than 6,000 delegates according to the ISSD):
One is hard-pressed not to conclude that come hell or high-water, the UN is bound and determined to transfer wealth from developed economies to lesser ones.
Christopher, I haven’t read your book, and don’t know whether you cover this point.
Not only are activists using public money to manipulate the media, but the media is overwhelmingly complicit in the manipulation. I realized a long time ago that the media were little more than paid agenda peddlers. It’s only recently that I appreciated that most are too lazy and ignorant to even write their own stuff and rely on press releases from PR organizations.
Our universities are in serious need of some weeding and many of the academics need to have their tenure revoked and their employment terminated for academic misconduct.
If you always tell the truth, you don’t have to remember what you said!
Twenty minutes into the bloody stinking show and it is clear they’re just using pieces of sceptics statements and interviews as large targets for ‘the team’ and activists.
To me, it seems that Dessler slandered Singer.
Kenji should be outraged!
What a joke! What a joke! I am watching the PBS special (right now) and it is basically total political B.S. It has nothing to do about science. It is sad. I can not believe that we are so blind. I am buying a raft to head off sea level rise. I am frightened. (joke). But noboody is mentioning McIntyre and Watts. What’supwiththat?
You know what?… I hope Carbon Dioxide makes plants grow like crazy. I hope people at the coast will need to move to higher ground (they need the water and ski boats). At the end of it all…maybe the stupid humans of the Earth will all be gone and wonderful fish and giant carbon dioxide rich plants will re-populate the Earth with no agendas. No politics. I hope the human race will be gone because I am sick and tired of hearing all this #rap.
And Al Gore…oh my gosh…you are so beautiful…are you in San Francisco? Would you meet me for a Latte? Nice um $ss.
So, over the years Night Line on ABC became Night Lie.
Now Front Line of PBS walks knowingly into History as Front Lie.
Sad, but choices are what they are.
PBS has a death wish on itself.
They know very well where this will lead.
They will not have the votes soon, but off the clif they step.
Very cult like if you ask me.
Climate of denial? More like: “The 97% solution”. They trotted out that “97% of scientists” canard at every opportunity. (It also applied in that the “report” was easily 97% free of factual information.)
When you remove the ad-hom attacks and the failure to compare actual amounts of money spent on skeptics versus warmongers…..there wasn’t much left. Oh, they also went on about exoneration of climate-gate scientists….it was truly pathetic.
They deserve no quarter nor should we give them any.
I am sure others can add to the list of deficiencies if this were a balanced show but here are a few to start. Singer didnt get a chance to say why he disagreed with the 97% ers. They didnt explain how the 97% of climate scientists was determined (77 out of 79). They didnt interview dozens of esteemed scientists who could have gone into very technical scientific reasons why they are skeptics. They didnt explain what the current rate of sea level rise was. They didnt cover the issue of uncertainty. They didnt talk about the high level of Antarctic sea ice.They used a 10 year plateau and not the 14 year plateau in temperature . Why would anyone expect a PBS show to be anything like a fair piece about the issue
They say unfulfilled expectations is the causality of unhappiness. If anyone was expecting a fresh look at the skeptic view, from PBS… you can expect much unhappiness.
Me… I will continue with attempts, to transcend, any expectation of reason, from PBS. GK
Posted the following on their site right after the programs, it was pre-moderated and still has not appeared so I assume that they are censoring critical comments:
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Your program Climate of Doubt made me ill and has convinced me to never again donate funds to my local PBS affiliate.
It was the most sickening display of cognitive bias, activist propaganda ever seen on public television and a betrayal of every journalistic principal.
There were so many fallacious claims made it is hard to know where to start or even if it is worth investing my effort in attempting to talk to such a closed minded organization.
The one which offends me even more than the junk science claims made is the repetitive claim of a consensus of 98% of scientists.
First off, this is not how science is done, facts are not a popularity contest and history is replete with examples of the scientific consensus being wrong. For PBS to repetitively brandish this “statistic” as some sort of proof of AGW is a deliberate misrepresentation of science and irresponsible journalism – as public broadcasters and journalists it is your responsibility to inform and educate the public not misdirect and manipulate them.
Secondly you failed miserably to even bother to fact check you “98%” statistic. If you had you might have revealed to the public that this 98% number consisted of only 75 scientists who said yes to one question in a survey. That’s 75 scientists, and by the way that is out of over 3146 surveys that were completed by the scientists from the AGU who were asked to complete the survey. Oh and if you wonder how 75 out of 3146 works out to be 98% it happens when the survey writer has a predetermined outcome and rejects most of the survey results, cutting the surveys considered in the analysis down to 77 scientists.
So again 75 out of 77. That is hardly a consensus, nor is it even a reliable predictive result.
Contrast that with the 31,487 American scientists in the Oregon petition, which included 9,029 verified PhD credentialed scientists who reject the AGW theory.
You were pretty quick to dismiss this number out of hand and yet you applied no criticism to the poll with 75 votes in favour of AGW. That is hardly good reporting and amounts to nothing more than propaganda.
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Also sent same in a complaint to their very biased Ombudsman. I expect nothing to happen as a result, but WNED will never again receive a donation from me.
Upcoming opportunity: Live Chat 2 p.m. ET Thursday: Inside the Climate Wars October 23, 2012, 9:49 pm ET by Nathan Tobey
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I submitted:
Re: 97% consensus or cherry picking?
What evidence supports your “97% consensus” and why should we not consider it “cherry picking”?
That appears to be only 75 of 77 self identified “climate scientists” who published more than 50% of papers on “climate change” for the last 5 years – selected by MSc student Maggie Zimmerman out of 3,146 respondents of 10,257 Earth scientists surveyed, and who answered yes to “Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?“ Based on 2% of respondents, Doran and Zimmerman opined: “It seems that the debate on the authenticity of global warming and the role played by human activity is largely nonexistent among those who understand the nuances and scientific basis of long-term climate processes.” However, declaring “human activity” is a “significant” factor only says it is detectable, not that it is the major cause. Why is that not “cherry picking”?
Contrast the 31,478 degreed scientists signing the Petition Project, of whom 9,029 had PhDs who supported:
“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.“
References:
Peter T. Doran and Maggie Kendall Zimmerman, Examining the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change. EOS Vol. 90 (3) 20 Jan 2009.
Lawrence Solomon 97% cooked stats, Financial Post Jan 3, 2011.
Climate Change Reconsidered Appendix 4 The Petition Project NIPCC 2009 ISBN-13 – 978-1-934791-28-8.
Errata: Peter T. Doran and Maggie Kendall Zimmerman, Examining the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change. EOS Vol. 90 (3) 20 Jan 2009.
Climate Change Reconsidered Appendix 4 The Petition Project NIPCC 2009 ISBN-13 – 978-1-934791-28-8.
In the old days, they were called red foxes in the chicken coop, not activists.
Typical cut-n-paste reporting….loved the token Hayhoe Creationalist for ‘evangelical’ balance. As a lifelong student of science and history it is interesting to see propaganda on an issue when you have first hand knowledge of the facts. I can now discount all past and future Frontline investigations. Prof Dessler told me by email in the summer of 2011 that “there was no one in Texas qualified to debate him on climate”. I’m less than an hours drive from Aggieland, so Good Sir Horner, if you’re visiting College Station in the near future, drop me a line….i’ll buy your lunch !
Oh, BTW…the National Journal, Energy & Environment reporter, Coral Davenport, is an english major from Smith College by way of Politico, and a former travel writer….a young, attractive spokesmouth to admonish all non believers. In her case, the title of my article about Waxman, Markey & Polesi applies….”Only An Airhead Can Save Us From Air”.
Well, they have a code of ethics: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/about-us/journalistic-guidelines/
10. Nothing in the fairness rules should be interpreted to prevent a producer from making a point-of-view or authored program. However, such a program must be identified and labeled as such. Then these programs can be given great latitude as personal and artistic expressions so long as they are not inaccurate or defamatory.
Anybody see a label on this program?
David Hagen, here we are today again protesting the same silly and unreliable statistic about consensus from a 4 year old debunked survey, and the media is still brandishing this same lie unrepentantly and unashamedly. It is disheartening and almost enough to get me to give up and say screw the public – if this is what they want then let them eat cake. Go ahead, elect Obama again, put cap and trade in place, enrich your cronies, bankrupt the nation, destroy manufacturing, destabilize the energy grid. I feel like we are banging our heads against the wall, and that the public is mostly happy to be lied to and taken advantage of by a crooked government. Let them all fail. As long as I can find a sane place to emigrate to and a secure currency to put my retirement assets into. If I can find that safe little island in a world of crazy climate cultism, I will happily text my LOL’s and other mockery to the fools who voted to be taken to the cleaners, when the “told ya so” day finally comes.
From those watching from afar, keep on their tail Mr. Horner, you are so close you’ve got their pulse and I hope you never let it go.
Just how is the U.S. ever going to purge this corruption out of our science institutions? With the some quarter million laws on the books it looks like those would be more than covered it but yet no one is actually enforcing the existing laws. They might catch one or two but then a hundreds just slip through.
The billions and billions just keep flowing. Any news on this front from the hill? Is IRS powerless? Is GAO worthless? Is the NSF/DOE the culprit? I sure hope Romney intends to make this one of his very first thrusts when sworn in. We need much more investigation and constant oversight of these tax exempt NGOs, environmentalist charities, universities satellite climate agencies.
There is ongoing cross money laundering and you can just smell its stink.
The reality is there isn’t any ongoing “climate change”, not in one lifetime’s scale, a +/- annual averaged degree or even two is not a change in any local climate and there doesn’t exist such a thing as a “global climate”.
The 9x% figure carries its own ‘odeur de BS’ with it. That’s the same kind of number of supporting votes tyrants get in faked elections, and people have long known how to interpret them. “BS!” Climate Warmists are blind to such self-discrediting effects though, and blithely “exploit” them wherever possible.
Stupidity is Nature’s only capital crime.
Whoa! PBS managed to drag up every left wing nut conspiracy fantasy they could dream up. They focused more “image time” on the wheel chair bound reporter and his beaten puppy dog look. The last thing the disabled folk want is pity or to exploit their situation for gain. Oops, my bad. Some will exploit it and PBS is willing to help exploit them. It’s a sensitive topic for me.
The editing is amazing. Mister Horner with his footballer chiseled looks in his lawyerly pressed slacks vs the moon faced (autistic?) puppy dog. Mittens may be correct, PBS crossed the line and dragged Bird Bird into funding oblivion. Pitiful.
Oddly enough, they seemed more interested in disgracing the Tea party (find a spokesperson yet?) and denigrating free market economics than discussing whether the climate science is strong enough to dismantle the world’s economy.
I saw the show and have to say that I thought it was about the politics of AGW. Not the science. Almost all of the commenters seem to think that the show was supposed to show the truth about the science involved. Certainly there has to be some discussion of the science and the show did a little on that, but science was just grist for the mill. The point of the show was to describe a history. At one point there was a “Consensus” . The show described some of the main characters and their effect on public policy and politicians. Then came a change and there appeared to be a number of scientist that were opposed to the consensus, and they got organized. The show presented interviews with some of the significant people involved. By this time there is a little controversy that soon explodes in to Climate gate, thus the interviews are necessarily a little testy. The show described the non scientists involved and the role of political/idealogical activists. The two sides battled it out in Congress and the non-consensus side won. And they won so convincingly that the whole issue has been buried. The Show ended as do all stories of battles, with interviews with the obviously happy victors and the equally lamenting vanquished. So why are you getting so bent out of shape about PBS. Its just a story of politics, and the history of the rise and fall of an issue with a little bit of bio on some of the characters involved.
That day may come soon, if there is a sharp downturn in global temps over the next three to five years, as I suspect there will be. If so, we can rub Frontline’s nose in it, and go on to argue that it and PBS are not entitled to any more government subsidies as a result of their propaganda. Depending on how elections go, such a measure might pass congress. Frontline, and advocacy groups that have continued their vocal insistence that climate catastrophism is 97% settled, are taking a big risk.
But theirs is an ethic of ideal ends, not one of responsibility, so the risk has likely not occurred to them. Or maybe they think they can talk their way out of any pickle they get into, at least well enough to fool most of their funders.