By Joe Bast – Executive director, Heartland Institute via press release
OCTOBER 24 — On October 23, PBS’s “Frontline” program broadcast a special titled “Climate of Doubt.” The Heartland Institute had circulated a commentary prior to the program’s broadcast, which appears below, which said in part, “We hope the program is accurate and fair, but past experience with PBS and other mainstream media outlets leads us to predict it will be neither.” We offered some “facts to keep in mind when watching this program.”
So what did we think of the actual show? It wasn’t as bad as we had feared, but it wasn’t as good as it should have been. The following statement from Joseph Bast, president of The Heartland Institute – a free-market think tank – may be used for attribution.
It appears host John Hockenberry spent enough time with global warming “skeptics” to know we are sincere, honest, and effective, but not enough time to learn we are right on the science. Rather than examining the scientific debate directly – “looking under the hood,” as we like to say here at The Heartland Institute – he decided to rely uncritically on the claims of a few alarmists pretending to speak for “climate science.” That choice ultimately makes “Climate of Doubt” a biased and unreliable guide to the scientific debate.
The first half of the program consists mostly of short clips from global warming skeptics and political activists who helped convince majorities of the public and elected officials that man-made climate change is not a crisis. Included in this part of the show is footage taken during Heartland’s Seventh International Conference on Climate Change and interviews with Heartland Senior Fellows S. Fred Singer and James M. Taylor and the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Myron Ebell and Chris Horner. This part of the program is generally fair, though surprisingly light on interviews with scientists other than Dr. Singer. More than 100 scientists have spoken at Heartland conferences, nearly all of them skeptical of claims that man-made global warming is a crisis. It’s surprising and disappointing that Frontline didn’t seek interviews with any of them or even show excerpts from their presentations, except Dr. Singer.
The quality of the program starts to deteriorate at about the 20-minute mark. Notorious global warming alarmists Gavin Schmidt, Katherine Hayhoe, Andrew Dessler, and Ralph Cicerone are presented as representative of the mainstream scientific community, which they are not. Rather than use the program to put an end to the myth of scientific consensus on this complex issue, Hockenberry repeatedly invokes the discredited myth of a 97 percent consensus. Evidence in support of that claim is farcical. The issue of what role, if any, consensus should play in science is not addressed at all.
The second half of the program also speculates on the role that corporate and philanthropic funding plays in the debate … but it only addresses the funding of skeptics, not of alarmists. Once again this was a missed opportunity. Why didn’t Hockenberry end the myth, started by Ross Gelbspan but never documented, that global warming skeptics were or are currently being funded by oil companies to “sow doubt”? The Heartland Institute certainly was never part of such a plan, nor were any of the scientists we work with. Yet this libelous smear is repeated without rebuttal by Hockenberry and by the alarmists he interviews.
A third strike against the program occurs at the very end, when the off-camera voices of alarmists assert scientific confidence in predictions of an impending climate apocalypse while images appear of deserts and extreme weather events. Gone is any pretense of a balanced view of the scientific debate. This technique, typical of propaganda films such as “An Inconvenient Truth” and “The Day After Tomorrow,” cheapens and discredits an otherwise thoughtful program.
No scientist interviewed for the program offered proof that any of the climatic events shown at the end of the program were caused by human activity, nor could they. One suspects this ending was tacked on after production to address the expected criticism and disappointment of environmental activists who object to anyone in the mainstream media treating skeptics with respect.
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KR, which part of the IPCC report, the AR4 which was written by the number of scientists you mentioned, or the SPM which was written by one and differs almost 180 degrees from the AR4 section?
KR, you have either not done your homework, or do not understand that the people who post on WUWT? are not your average bears. Better step up your flaccid game.
Perhaps you are the new Spawn character; “The Obfuscator”.
D Böehm – Regarding petitions: We could get equal numbers of signatures on petitions both for or against theories of global warming, UFO’s, legalizing gay marriage, or demonic possession as a cause of disease. What would any _one_ of these petitions say about percentages, about consensus, on that issue?
Absolutely nothing, either way. Because petitions are self-selecting; those who disagree just don’t sign. A survey can tell you about percentage agreement, about possible consensus – a petition is the wrong instrument for that.
Russ R. – A worthwhile question, here are my views: 1-7 have a strong consensus (with some bounds for sensitivities and responses). 8-9 have widely varying effects depending on which region, which aspect of the climate. While there is a lot of ongoing work on the details, the net effect in 8-9 is expected to be adverse, but with much less consensus on particulars. 10-12 are economic questions, with strong dependence on the economic assumptions involved (economic voodoo, anyone?), though the average of the studies I’ve seen show adaptations costs 5-10x that of mitigations.
There are uncertainties – but the existence of uncertainty does not mean a complete lack of knowledge. If you throw a baseball you don’t know exactly where it will land (uncertainty) – but you can be pretty certain it won’t be at your feet, or behind you (knowledge).
—
Back on topic – yes, there _is_ a consensus, if you talk to a lot of climate scientists a high percentage agree on strong anthropogenic causes of climate change. And skeptics (Singer) and skeptic think-tanks receive considerable (and documented) monies from industry, and/or in the case of Heartland from ideologically driven individuals like their Anonymous Donor (likely Barre Seid?), who promote a particular viewpoint completely aside from the _scientific evidence_.
This is important – as Frank Luntz noted, the public takes consensus of the experts into consideration when framing policy decisions. Unfortunately for groups like Heartland, that consensus exists.
KR says:
“Regarding petitions: We could get equal numbers of signatures…”
BZ-Z-Z-Z-ZZZT!! WRONG.
But thanx for playing, and Vanna has some lovely parting gifts for you on your way out.
In fact, the relatively small climate alarmist clique has attempted to gather signatures on their anti-carbon petitions, but they have done poorly. No alarmist petition has come anywhere near the OISM numbers.
The true consensus is contained in the OISM language:
There you have it: CO2 is harmless, and beneficial to the biosphere. That is the consensus, and it trumps your mere assertions.
That only matters for Post-Normal Scientists, not actual empirical ones. KR you are a mucking fuppet
D Böehm – Counting petition signatures (again, self-selection, not a cross-section) tells you _nothing_ about percentage agreement in a population. Particularly when a petition (like the OISM) doesn’t check for topic-specific knowledge about the evidence. I would weigh a mechanics opinion over my dentist’s when considering car repairs, after all.
Again – petitions tell you _nothing_ about population percentages.
If folks feel that there is not a consensus of opinion in climate science regarding anthropogenic influences on climate change, then show it. Do surveys (not self-selected, non-representative petitions), check publications and/or publication submissions, show your data.
Waiting … crickets…
The evidence shows a consensus among those who have studied the evidence and the science behind it.
KR,
You’re just full of assertions, aren’t you? But you’re only hand-waving. I have solid numbers, and the fact is that the alarmist crowd tried, but failed to get anywhere close to the OISM numbers.
I know reality bites, but the fact is that your side does not have a consensus. That’s entirely in your imagination. Face it, the Michael Manns of this world don’t want a lot of competition for federal grant dollars. They claim ‘consensus’ just like you’re doing, with assertions rather than with hard numbers. But there is not a consensus that believes Mann’s scare stories. And there probably never was.
There are more co-signers on other petitions, too:
See here and here and here and here.
I suggest you move on from your failed ‘consensus’ argument. The real numbers are killing you.
Why make Fred Singer the centerpiece of this science smear ? Simple !
The PBS propagandists got dear Fred on tape saying the Freon ban was a hoax, that the Oxone hole was a hoax, that acid rain was a hoax, that second-hand smoke is a hoax…AND…that global warming was a hoax. Fred is the white-bearded Santa Claus of LIBERAL ICON DENIAL !
Next cut-and-paste the evangelical Hayhoe-Beisner hot-cold faction. Give Happy Andy of TAMU a plea for presidential pardon from FOIA requests, show a few seconds of Roy Spencers chin and a finger waging from the Big Bird of science thought from the National Journal. What an Afront to Reason to have an “Energy and Environment” reporter, from preppy Smith College with an English degree and fresh off the restaurant review and Politico beat lecture humanity on science. Methinks she chose the English major because science and math were….LIKE SO HARD.
It was hard for Frontline to live down to my expectations….but they succeeded !
KR says “1-7 have a strong consensus (with some bounds for sensitivities and responses)”
You might argue that “climate models have strong consensus”. Or equivalently, “most climate models demonstrate positive feedback”. But the feedback is programmed in, a function of parameter settings for convection and other processes that cannot be modeled. The results of the models are extremely varied. It is obvious when using any of them to forecast ENSO; not only do they fail miserably but there are as many forecasts as there are models. Since you have probably not read Tisdale’s book, you probably don’t realize that ENSO is not a cycle and can result in warming or cooling over multi-decade periods, a great example being the 80’s and 90’s.
KR says:
October 24, 2012 at 5:59 pm
“Waiting … crickets…”
=============
You’re not asking the right question.
KR;
Keep battling buddy. Scream all you want about surveys and consensus and what majority of who believes what.
But don’t say anything about the fact that IPCC AR4 WG1 2.9.1 in one simple chart makes a complete mockery of your claims. You haven’t addressed my point, nor the points made by others about the science itself. You just keep asserting that there is a consensus. You’re not fooling anyone but yourself, and I suspect, not even that. You’re just reciting your lines like a good paid for troll.
Roy Spencer exposes a Climate of Doubt about PBS’s Objectivity
Then see the following valuable advice for being interviewed:
KR is studying to be a useless idiot. 😉
DaveE.
KR says:
October 24, 2012 at 5:59 pm
If folks feel that there is not a consensus of opinion in climate science regarding anthropogenic influences on climate change, then show it. Do surveys (not self-selected, non-representative petitions), check publications and/or publication submissions, show your data.
Waiting … crickets…
The evidence shows a consensus among those who have studied the evidence and the science behind it.
======================================
Is selecting for someone better than self-selecting? I’m more than willing and able to go through each supposed study of consensus and demonstrate how each one is wrong. If and when there is a legitimate study or survey, I’ll reconsider whether there is a consensus or not.
Ironically, I used to believe there actually was a consensus. I thought they were all horribly wrong anyway, but, nonetheless, I thought there was a consensus. Until I looked at their garbage papers so desperately trying to prove one. They are laughable and horrible works of sophistry. Take you’re pick, we can discuss one at a time, because they each have their ……. issues.
Apologies as I posted a very similar statement in another post on a related thread.
The whole process of gathering and sifting words from sceptics and scientists (the real ones) for the right takes. Then planning who rebuts, in what order, interspersed with pitiful views, words of disappointment about how this small meager well funded group has managed to block such worthy climate gag men and ladies. Frequently mentions of wrong information coupled with ad-hominems against that tiny group of anti-CAGW rogues. And so on…
This took weeks of planning with input from climate team members who were not part of the interviews. PBS is open to FOIA. Perhaps it is time for the public to request copies of all messages between certain climate team members and PBS, copies of all edit takes, copies of any dialog or notes about the process of this broadcast from the time it started.
Two things caught my interest and had me wondering.
The first was the similarity in a number fly by troll visits with many haranguing about which survey Mr. Watts included in a topic (by a guest author no less, Anthony didn’t choose which survey). The only substantive difference I could really see between the surveys was who got paid for the garbage.
Next, I find it suspicious that this sham of a frontline show occurred almost concurrent with Manniacal’s lawsuit filings. Especially since there were a number of insistances included about exonerations, replications. Gee, I wonder who insisted those parts got mention on the show.
Lewpy may scream on (I have this wonderful mental image of Lewpy face in Edvard Munch’s painting, and another with Gleick and another with Manniacal), about conspiracies; but this rather common CAGW consensus, exonerbations, false replications, Dessie baby impugning Doctor Singer,climate team thread seems to include a number of non-interviewed climate team statements.
Collimate all the odd pieces of information makes this buffoonline show along with panned Manniacals lawsuit announcement and the troll droppings seeding disruption and how can anyone blame us for wondering just what went on behind the scenes in preparing for this show? Seriously, just check KR’s posts to see someone trying make mountains out of mini marshmallows.
Perhaps it is time for the public to FOIA copies of all messages between certain climate team members, certain journalists and PBS, copies of all edit takes, copies of any dialog, dialog notes, scripting or notes about the process of this broadcast from the time it started. Anyone wonder how high PBS can squeel when FOIA might expose them as in bed with CAGW activists?
D Böehm says: ”Any physicist, engineer, chemist or geologist can easily understand the subject matter”
Yes they can, but they don’t. Because most of them become ”populist Skeptics” believing that the planet’s temp goes up and down as a yo-yo. .
D Böehm, you didn’t say what’s the temp on your planet. Do you belong to the majority, who believe that: the planet is warmer by 12C at noon, than before sunrise?
bottom line: CO2 doesn’t produce catastrophic, or non catastrophic global warming. Saying: ” it will not be ”catastrophic” is loaded comment, helping the Warmist. People on the street know that: if it can happen, probably will happen. Your not catastrophic is as big lie as their catastrophic, only more destructive – because you pretend to be skeptical. Skeptical about WHAT?
Joe Bast had his say above. Here’s the critique of Communications Director Jim Lakely. It’s a bit more critical, and breaks it down, bullet-point style:
http://blog.heartland.org/2012/10/thoughts-on-pbs-frontlines-climate-of-doubt-program/
Come on guys, stop feeding the troll. Anybody in this day and age, after all the climate science ‘revelations’, climategate, etc, etc – who still thinks there is a 97% consensus is seriously deranged. FFS, the ‘study’ has been discredited a million times, in a thousand different ways. The alarmists cling to it like some magic floating piece of flotsam that they hope will save them from drowning in the sea of sh*t they created! Let them swim through the sh*t to get to the good ship ‘Science’ and be rescued, otherwise leave the buggers to drown! (Hey, there’a a cartoon in there for Josh, I’m sure!).
regards
Yow, that’s really “damning with faint praise”: better than expected. It was trash, but not quite blatant full-throated idiocy? Not sure I agree. I think it was malevolent misdirection.
Readers on both sides here can’t seem to see the relevance of the verdict in Italy where the ‘experts’ were convicted for their ‘predictions’ which lacked any interpretative basis.The outrage of the community is that predictions cannot be proposed as scientific certainty hence the criminal conviction was unjust yet in matters of global warming,the predictions were proposed as certain and the rest of the world is convicted for irresponsible behavior which is driving the prediction of global warming.
The issue was never really about global warming or,the morphing of that particular agenda into the intellectually suicidal ‘climate change’ based on human control over planetary temperatures,for a sane society would have made a decisive effort to stop that nonsense by pointing out that interpretation is of paramount importance over speculative modeling and predictions.Instead the argument has moved sideways into personal attacks based on social ideologies and nothing could be worse for the future citizens of this planet.
The curtain is supposed to rise on the real problem – the limitations of the vicious strain of empiricism that give rise to this nonsense of human control over global temperatures which is at the heart of the discussion.Very few have ever understood that an imbalance even exists between narrow predictive modeling and true science which widens its views when encountering atrocities like the current one.There were once people who wrote about it but as the centuries have shown,few really understand the true nature of the problem but Von Homboldt certainly did –
“This empiricism, the melancholy heritage transmitted to us from former times, invariably contends for the truth of its axioms with the arrogance of a narrowminded spirit. Physical philosophy, on the other hand, when based upon science, doubts because it seeks to investigate, distinguishes between that which is certain and that which is merely probable, and strives incessantly to perfect theory by extending the circle of observation. “This assemblage of imperfect dogmas bequeathed by one age to another— this physical philosophy, which is composed of popular prejudices,—is not only injurious because it perpetuates error with the obstinacy engendered by the evidence of ill observed facts, but also because it hinders the mind from attaining to higher views of nature. Instead of seeking to discover the mean or medium point, around which oscillate, in apparent independence of forces, all the phenomena of the external world, this system delights in multiplying exceptions to the law, and seeks, amid phenomena and in organic forms, for something beyond the marvel of a regular succession, and an internal and progressive development. Ever inclined to believe that the order of nature is disturbed, it refuses to recognise in the present any analogy with the past, and guided by its own varying hypotheses, seeks at hazard, either in the interior of the globe or in the regions of space, for the cause of these pretended perturbations. It is the special object of the present work to combat those errors which derive their source from a vicious empiricism and from imperfect inductions.” Homboldt ,Cosmos
To arrive at a decisive conclusion requires a different approach and one readers here haven’t entertained as there is a false satisfaction from knowing each other’s points of view and throwing graphs across at each other.
I don’t think the Heartland’s word-doc-turned-pdf ends the argument on the consensus paper. It is filled with 4 conjectures that have no evidence of any kind, only value judgements that can be made about any consensus, of any kind.
PBS are perfectly entitled to cite a paper from the PNAS saying 97% of climate scientists agree with AGW. As a pubic broadcaster, they are obliged to cite papers from the US’ premier scientific institution – especially a paper that has no criticisms in the scientific record. May I remind you that PBS does not live on Bullshit Mountain, where PNAS is an activist organisation and the peer-review process a rubberstamp of fraud.
However I agree with the post about linking individual extreme weather events to global warming – the media should be careful about this. The scientific record has plenty of proof that climate change has increased the likelihood of, for instance, floods and droughts and many scientists at the NOAA have given qualified, non-published opinions that the heatwave in the US was at least exacerbated by global warming – but linking specific events is still beyond the abilities of the scientific community today. However, leading into droughts and floods may be interpreted in several ways, so….
GW claims remind me of Irving Langmuir’s description of Pathological Science, which are;
• The maximum effect that is observed is produced by a causative agent of barely detectable intensity, and the magnitude of the effect is substantially independent of the intensity of the cause.
• The effect is of a magnitude that remains close to the limit of detectability, or many measurements are necessary because of the very low statistical significance of the results.
• There are claims of great accuracy.
• Fantastic theories contrary to experience are suggested.
• Criticisms are met by ad hoc excuses.
• The ratio of supporters to critics rises and then falls gradually to oblivion.
Pathological science, as defined by Langmuir, is a psychological process in which a scientist, originally conforming to the scientific method, unconsciously veers from that method, and begins a pathological process of wishful data interpretation.
KR, you need to be careful when conducting a meta-analysis of these various sources you cite. Studies have shown that meta-analysis of discordant studies (ie combining some white papers, some grey papers, tweets, interviews, and different types of polls) will produce spurious results. It’s kind of like a stew. Yes, you can cook it up from all kinds of ingredients. But you cannot then call it roast beef. It starts out as a stew and ends up as a stew. Another way of looking at it would be trying to bake and ice a yummy birthday cake made from gravy, sawdust, turnips, sugar, and yeast. Yes, you can label it a cake, but no one will eat it and fewer still will call it a cake other than you. I recommend a graduate level class in research critique, especially in the area of survey research.
davidmhoffer – “…don’t say anything about the fact that IPCC AR4 WG1 2.9.1 in one simple chart makes a complete mockery of your claims. You haven’t addressed my point, nor the points made by others about the science itself.”
What I’ve discussed in this thread are primarily the skeptic claims that ‘there is no consensus on the science showing anthropogenic causes of global warming’. There certainly is a consensus of anthropogenic warming among those who study the climate, with only a tiny minority disagreeing – claims otherwise are incorrect and unsupported.
The mostly empty lecture rooms at the Heartland conference, as shown in the Frontline episode, demonstrate that clearly: 300 attendees total? When the AGU fall meeting sees ~20,000, with 82% agreement (Doran 2009) on human influence? And multiple surveys showing >90% among those who study climate directly? IMO efforts such as Heartlands to dismiss that consensus are just rhetorical, ideological misinformation intended to slow public acceptance of expert opinion – and blunt any policy changes based on the science.
—
WRT the science discussed in the section of the IPCC report you refer to, look at the numbers. The uncertainties in levels of radiative forcing are explicitly shown in http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch2s2-9-2.html – anthropogenic drivers of +1.6 W m^2 with a 0.6 to 2.4 W m^2 90% confidence range. And a 0.2% chance of zero or below; if you want to make a 1/500 bet, go right ahead – but I won’t.
And to not put too fine a point on it KR, taking a cross-section of various types of sources and performing a meta-analysis is standard meta-analysis procedure in what research manual?