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Comments 64101 to 64150:

  1. Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
    CBDunkerson: Their activity with the Angry Badger project (helping the governor of Wisconsin fight off a recall effort) could be beyond the scope for a tax-exempt non-profit of their type. That should really be investigated.
  2. Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
    The Atlantic article makes a good case (except for an inexplicable erroneous tangent on the history of human chromosome research) and, along with other issues discussed in this thread, makes it seem likely that the strategy memo was faked. Which, if true, is just annoying. Where does this impulse to muck up important revelations by introducing an element of fraud that allows the whole thing to be questioned come from? It will be interesting to see whether we hear anything further about a police investigation. I think alot of us have a natural inclination to view Heartland's moral bankruptcy as inevitably tied to illegalities which would prevent them from going to the police. However, given the continual weakening of laws against 'influence peddling' in the US Heartland's actions may well be perfectly 'legitimate'... which is a whole other kind of depressing.
  3. Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
    mistigiri: Standard procedure: They're never going to confirm or deny. The only reason they disavowed the Strategy doc was that it made them look too bad (in addition to probably being faked).
  4. Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
    nealjking, yes, I'd seen the Atlantic article. I'm inclined to agree with Richard Littlemore on desmogblog, that it's up to HI to provide evidence that the strategy document was faked, or that the other documents have been altered. On the HI website they are still claiming that the "authenticity of those documents has not yet been confirmed". I think it's legitimate to ask why not.
  5. DenialGate Highlights Heartland's Selective NIPCC Science
    Why do people still pay more for things that are advertised more? Because repetition works, even if the stated facts are wrong, even if they are irrelevant. That is why they just keep repeating those debunked old myths. People assume that nobody in their right mind would keep repeating debunked stories .. so if they do, it seems that there must be something in their repetition. And if you say that these guys are in some kind of conspiracy to spread debunked stories .. that makes you look like a conspiracy theorist, doesn't it?
  6. Tropical Thermostats and Global Warming
    I wonder what's the reason for the "tropical thermostat" argument being put forward by AGW 'sceptics' like Roger Pielke Sr. et all. Because they want to downplay global warming we're facing? No, that does not make sense. Because, in fact, this argument does not support the 'sceptic' point of view, which seeks the "it's not bad", "the temp rise will not be as high as predicted" type of conclusion. According to this argument, if the ocean cannot warm-up above the current limit in the tropics, then where will the extra heat generated from the eccess CO2 go? It will not "evaporate into space" but stay in the system. Given that simple observation, and all other factors assumed equal, that extra heat will likely end up in the atmosphere. So the land, on which we inhabit would become hotter, a lot hotter, because of far lower energy capacity of air. So, the global warming as measured by LST would be much higher. So, I would call the proponents of such "SST thermostat" theory the "extreme warmists".
  7. DenialGate Highlights Heartland's Selective NIPCC Science
    Dana, Excellent article. How long is the NIPCC report?
  8. Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
    mistigiri: An article in The Atlantic gives cogent reasons, based on study of the content of the Strategy document, that it is probably fake: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/02/leaked-docs-from-heartland-institute-cause-a-stir-but-is-one-a-fake/253165/ It's worth reading.
  9. DenialGate Highlights Heartland's Selective NIPCC Science
    Yes, you would have to have just half a brain to think that Heartland are sincere. I'm sure even the "skeptics" don't really think that Heartland is anything more than a lobby group putting out disinformation.
  10. Breaking News…The Earth Is Warming…Still!
    Woody @ 19 - CO2 is a well-mixed gas in the atmosphere. Therefore it's affect on the 'cool skin' layer of the ocean is global in scale, and more or less, uniform. And no, it is not stronger at the tropics than at the poles. That asymmetry is a function of the more intense heating that occurs at the equator, due to the more intense sunlight there. A useful way of thinking about it, is similar to the way greenhouse gases work in the atmosphere - trapping heat and letting less escape to space. The same principle is at work in the ocean - greenhouse gases trap more heat in the ocean and less is able to escape to the atmosphere.
  11. Breaking News…The Earth Is Warming…Still!
    Guardianista2012 @ 7 - "What stops the heat from rising rapidly?" Not sure I understand the question, but I'll have a stab and assume you're talking about why global warming, and particularly ocean warming, doesn't occur rapidly by human timescales. That's because the forcing by greenhouse gases grows gradually every year as we burn more fossil fuels. This is, however, obscured by natural variability in the climate system - El Nino/La Nina, the solar (sun spot) cycle for instance.
  12. Breaking News…The Earth Is Warming…Still!
    actually thoughtful wrote "Please no! Lose means to reduce in quantity or not know where it is. Loose means not fitting well." Agreed. And in this case the thing that is being reduced in quantity is the energy. Or are you suggesting that energy doesn't fit well in the atmosphere? In the context: "More of the GH gases make it harder for the Earth to loose energy to space" Using "loose" looks terrible from a UK English point of view, but I have seen it misused like that in other places on the net.
  13. DenialGate Highlights Heartland's Selective NIPCC Science
    A lot of conservatives seem to be left wing nuts based on Bast's rant. Why does he see everything in black and white?
  14. DenialGate Highlights Heartland's Selective NIPCC Science
    We must peel back the layers of science, until there is no science left.
  15. DenialGate Highlights Heartland's Selective NIPCC Science
    Doug H, quotes like that make me feel I'm teetering on the edge of an endlessly recursive intellectual black-hole! Yep, somewhere there's a platonic, real scientific establishment, who will sweep in and save us from... um, well, the actual scientific establishment... Epistemic Closure achieved, My Leader!
  16. Tropical Thermostats and Global Warming
    Pluvial, There's a lot of interesting regional effects of this sort that people have looked at for the Amazon rainforest, Sahara desert, etc which are embedded features within the larger scale circulation. But it's actually not so trivial to change the fractional area of convection over the tropical ocean, as cloudy regions are coupled to clear sky regions by dynamical heat transports. Indeed, to the extent that the SST threshold for convection changes at a similar rate as the tropical mean SST, one would expect little change in the fractional area of convectively active regions over the ocean, even with an increase in moisture.
  17. Breaking News…The Earth Is Warming…Still!
    Glen, Really excellent clear informative exhaustive responses! And I agree with you about Mother nature, though I will take a lag if nature will give it to us. I actually would hope for a significant increase in temps in the next few years to get the politics going and THEN a bit of a lag! I imagine that in 10 years we could really mobilize and make huge initial progress of transitioning away from fossil fuels, and 50 to really complete it.
  18. Bert from Eltham at 19:28 PM on 17 February 2012
    DenialGate Highlights Heartland's Selective NIPCC Science
    "shoud persuade anyone with half a brain" Mission accomplished! Bert
  19. Breaking News…The Earth Is Warming…Still!
    Woody Ocean Heating along with the secondary heating like the atmosphere - what we call global warming - is caused by changes to the various heat fluxes in the climate system, including DLR Trenberth, Fasullo & Kiehl 2008 estimate absorbed fluxes down to the surface as follows: Solar absorbed by the surface - 161 Watts/M^2, Back Radiation 333 Watts/M^2 This is averaged out over the entire planet, rather than just the oceans. So to your comment: "This ocean heating is all the result of down-welling long wave IR from the extra CO2 in the atmosphere" Not quite true. Rather, the heating of everything, oceans, air etc is driven by changes in the balance of various factors. The previous temperature was based on the previous balance.When the balance changes, the temperature changes. However, this varies hugely with latitude. "Do all 1 m2 patches of ocean, at any point on the globe, receive the same amount of down-welling long wave IR radiation? Is it stronger at the tropics than the polar regions? Thanks, in advance, for any answers. " Yes, this stuff varies hugely with latitude. In the Tropics the amount of incoming Solar absorbed is greater than that radiated to space. The difference in energy between the two is moved toward the Poles by the major circulation patterns of the weather systems. So too the amount of downwelling radiation varies with latitude since this is driven by the temperarure profile of the atmosphere which varies with latitude.
  20. DenialGate Highlights Heartland's Selective NIPCC Science
    And as for the Bast lambast, one of the comments posted in response to it says:
    This madness will never stop until these con artists are exposed and suffer the censure of the scientific establishment.
    I couldn't have put it better myself, except that the commenter was not referring to Bast's madness, but the madness of The Worldwide Conspiracy Of Scientists And Everyone Who Doesn't Support The Tea Party, presumably.
  21. Breaking News…The Earth Is Warming…Still!
    owl905 I have to disagree. Physically Mother Nature might have given us some wriggle room. By Psychologically she has trumped us. Nothing is going to lull people into a sense, not of complacency, but of lethargy & inertia, more than the 'Nothing to Report Here' meme. If Mother Nature (not wanting to over-anthropomorphise here) wanted us to act on this 'She' would have scared the living bejeesus out of is ages ago.
  22. DenialGate Highlights Heartland's Selective NIPCC Science
    The spooky thing is that some people will still prefer the NIPCC reports over the IPCC, even when their noses are rubbed in the evidence. It is people like those who give Heartland and others a reason to continue spinning, misinforming and weaseling. It makes me sad to be a member of the same species. As Homer Simpson is reputed to have said "Weasel words are what set humans apart from other animals. Except weasels."
  23. Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
    Regarding the so-called faked stragey document, I think the jury is still out. HI has a strong motive for denying the document, and it's the most deniable because it only exists in scanned form. In contrast it's hard to understand what motive the leaker might have for gilding the lily in this way, especially if his/ her main objective was incite IRS scrutiny of HI's charitable status. According to this article, which contains direct quotes from HI's local FBI office, no complaint has been received nor is there any obvious legal basis for an investigation. Heartland Instition raising money off "Denialgate"
  24. DenialGate Highlights Heartland's Selective NIPCC Science
    Wow, I think Bast is his own (and Heartland's) worst enemy.
  25. DenialGate Highlights Heartland's Selective NIPCC Science
    Ian F: That piece from Bast is amazing. Given the multiple external confirmations of the leaked information and this kind of outburst, who now needs the documents to make a case against Heartland? And to think I'd been rating them as some species of Machiavellian masterminds!
  26. Breaking News…The Earth Is Warming…Still!
    This ocean heating is all the result of down-welling long wave IR from the extra CO2 in the atmosphere? Imagine a 1 m2 section of equatorial ocean. What is the ratio between the amount of energy received by this patch from this down-welling long wave IR vs that received from direct sunlight over an average year? Do all 1 m2 patches of ocean, at any point on the globe, receive the same amount of down-welling long wave IR radiation? Is it stronger at the tropics than the polar regions? Thanks, in advance, for any answers.
  27. DenialGate Highlights Heartland's Selective NIPCC Science
    Years ago, the pro-pollutionist tactics were already well-established: 1. Nothing is happening. 2. Something is happening, but it's natural. 3. Something unnatural is happening, but it's good. 4. Something bad was happening, but it's stopped. 5. Something bad is happening but it's too expensive to tackle. 6. Something bad could be addressed but ... Nothing is happening. It was the Boston Herald that provided the capstone to the outline:- 'and at every oppportunity the discussion will be pushed back up the ladder'.
  28. DenialGate Highlights Heartland's Selective NIPCC Science
    Joe Bast has written a rebuttal to a New York Times article on deniergate. It contains two paragraphs which show the complete dishonesty and misinformation which is Heartland's stock in trade. The first is about DW's "education" project: "Actually, we’re sharing the real opinions of real scientists on the causes, consequences, and likely future trajectory of climate change, and of economists and other policy experts on what should be done about it, if anything. And of course principals and teachers are biased… most are liberal Democrats, and large majorities of liberal Democrats believe in man-made global warming". The second is a response to the idea that Heartland is "undermining" climate science: "Our mission is not to “undermine climate science,” and even a superficial examination of our corpus of work should persuade anyone with half a brain that we are sincere. Our mission is to report climate science (and economics) more objectively than the environmentalists and left-wing nuts who are using the issue to support their legislative agendas". It seems that the more that Bast and his lackeys are blasting the media and others for exposing the misinformation put out by Heartland the worse it gets for Heartland. No wonder the donors what to remain anonymous.
  29. Breaking News…The Earth Is Warming…Still!
    Glenn @ 17 "changes in ocean circulation might buy us time." It's already bought us time. "it can also provide a pretext for slowing action to reduce CO2 emissions" What 'slowing action'?? The global response to GHG-pollution is virtually dead. It's full-bore with the fossil fuels. 20 years after the danger was known, the response is on whimper. "is mass, violent population decline." Scare someone else with the Malthusian collapse - the inheritance will be Garbage Dump Earth. "Mother Nature really hasn't done us any favours in the last decade." Yes, it certainly has. And the reaction shouldn't be denial, it should be gratitude for the wiggle room - because so far that slowdown is the only activity on the road that hasn't been pedal-to-the-metal.
  30. Tropical Thermostats and Global Warming
    If the dry regions act like radiators, what would happen if the deserts were made cloudy somehow? For exaple, as agriculture in the desert regions increases what effect does that have on global temperature. Any ideas on where to get such arguments?
  31. Breaking News…The Earth Is Warming…Still!
    owl905 Yes, changes in ocean circulation might buy us time. However there is enough uncertainty around how circulation patterns might change in future that we can't count on that. So maybe it buys us time for adaptation. If adaptation is going to be enough, ultimately. Unfortunately it can also provide a pretext for slowing action to reduce CO2 emissions, leaving us more dependent on adaptation down the track. Personal view is that adaptation can only achieve adequate results if we are on a low warming trajectory. If we continue on the current high warming trajectory then the primary adaptation strategy we will use, willingly or otherwise, is mass, violent population decline. And no adaptation strategy will slow the impacts of Ocean Acidification as CO2 climbs. Personally I hope that the model results reported by Meehl are right and that this Hiatus ends soon. Only when we see more serious warming will the dam of Denial break. Humanity can alter our energy systems rapidly if we are sufficiently motivated. But that motivation is esentially an emergency war-time like mobilisation. We won't do that if most people can treat AGW as a problem to worry about later. Mother Nature really hasn't done us any favours in the last decade.
  32. Breaking News…The Earth Is Warming…Still!
    I am staying completely out of any Trans-Atlantic Grammatical Wars, to bloody for this delicate soul. Let me know which you want and I will change it. Other changes fixed
  33. Breaking News…The Earth Is Warming…Still!
    tonydunc "couldn't it be argued that the huge time lag in deep ocean cycling could be responsible for temperature changes from decades or centuries ago?" Yes it could certainly be argued that if the total heat of the entire system wasn't rising. In a sense that is the basis of the whole 'we are recovering from the Little Ice Age' meme. If the atmosphere had cooled during the little Ice Age then the return of heat from the oceans would then explain surface warming. But the total system heat would not be increasing. And with the huge difference in heat capacity between the atmosphere and the oceans, it is hard to understand why such a 'recovery' is so slow. The extra heat that has shown up in the 0-2000 metre data in about 1/2 a decade is enough to warm the entire atmosphere by about 2 Deg C every year. "EG. arguing that ocean rifts are not adequately studied to determine Anthropocentric CO2 emissions. And I forget the actual argument, but something about how the CO13 to CO14 ratio is no proof of anthropocentric CO2 increase." There are two different arguments here. One suggests extra heat coming from ocean rifts etc. However total heat from within the Earth is only about 0.1 Watts/M^2 compared to the Forcing from a doubling of CO2 of 3.7 Watts/M^2. And it is incredibly hard to come up with a geological reason why the flux of geothermal heat would fluctuate on anything but geological time scales. The other half of this is subsea sources of CO2, perhaps suggesting the rise in CO2 isn't due to us. There are a number of arguments against this. 1st. The C12/C13 argument is very simple. Natural carbon ratios are 99% C12/1% C13. The only places where this isn't true is anything derived from plants - since the photosynthesis mechanism used by most plants preferentially absorbs C12, anything plant derived is C13 depleted. So, Plants, Soils, Animals, and Fossil Fuels. So if the extra CO2 in the atmosphere is coming from subsea vents, it wouldn't be C13 depleted. So it wouldn't change CC12/C13 ratios in the atmosphere in the ways we have observed. 2nd, the subsea vent argument has to explain where the CO2 humanity has emitted has gone. And if our CO2 can be totally absorbed into 'something' why isn't the CO2 being similarly absorbed. The only plausible answer to that is that CO2 from the sea floor massively exceeds humanities cumulative emissions. 3rd. If so much is being released on the sea floor, how does it reach the surface? If it rises to the surface as bubbles, where is all this 'schwepervesence', where are the bubbles that no sailor has ever reported. If it is dissolving in the ocean then it must reach the surface via the ocean overturning circulation, which requires centuries. So what are the odds that centuries ago, before the start of the Industrial Revolution, venting on the sea floor started releasing huge amounts of CO2 that would arrive at the surface just in time to look like it was our emissions while our emissions have mysteriously vanished. And if it were dissolving down there in such quantities the Carbonate Chemistry & Ph of the deep waters would show characteristics of that. And they don't. "SO how much do we know about heat exchange for the entire oceans? Or do we not need to know that because we can determine the rate of change, and that is enough?" We don't know everything about heat exchange in the ocean, but we know a lot. We know how fast heat diffuses in still water. We have mapped the major ocean currents, including their speed and the volumes of water moving, we have mapped salinity distributions. And we have the ability to measure temperatures, and thus heat content in detail for half the oceans volume and to a much lower resolution for the other half. As for what we need to know to know enough. Being able to measure heat content for the top half of the ocean and estimate whether the lower half s changing much is enough to do an energy balance. If the rate of total heat rise is continuing much as we expect we have a pretty good handle on what is happening. But more detailed studies such as Meehl help us understand more about the mechanisms. Understanding Ocean warming is important to our projections of future warming. Less about how much the whole system will warm eventually, but more about the journey to that final state. Will it be a steady rise in surface temps, or alternating periods of high warming and hiatus. This all depends on how the oceans flip-flop about a little. But this doesn't effect much what the final result will be.
  34. Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
    Eric, @207, thanks for the quick response confirming my worst fears. Mr. Morano certainly has dirt on his hands. It makes the H.I. hand-wringing about left-wing nutters even more hypocritical, if that were possible. Let's all treat the Strategy document as tainted and just use the legitimate documents as a stick to beat them with. Do I have any qualms about using information that may have been dishonestly acquired? Yes, to exactly the same extent that H.I. have qualms about misrepresenting the stolen UEA emails, conspiring to distort the teaching of science in schools, or supporting intemperate activists such as Mr. Morano.
  35. NASA scientists expect more rapid global warming in the very near future (part 2)
    Same story, this time from Lawrence Livermore Labs: Extreme summer temperatures occur more frequently ... previously rare high summertime (June, July and August) temperatures are already occurring more frequently in some regions of the 48 contiguous United States. ... What was historically a one in 20-year occurrence will occur with at least a 70 percent chance every year. This work shows an example of how climate change can affect weather extremes, as well as averages. --emphasis added Appears in Climatic Change.
  36. Breaking News…The Earth Is Warming…Still!
    The Oceans are a complex mix of forces. If we were dealing with a simple body of water heated from above convection would tend to push heat towards the surface but conduction, a much smaller factor would tend to push heat down. Then add that the oceans are salty and very deep and you can have salinity effects that counter the convection. During the early 1980's I was involved in a project devloping Solar Ponds. Large deep pools of water that were heavily salted to produce stratified layers of differing density that could counter the circulation due to thermal buoyancy. The result was a pool that reached 80-90C at the bottom from solar energy from above - we had to put up safety fencing and warning signs. The project failed because we couldn't maintain the stability of the salinity gradient. But it showed clearly how salinity/density effects can counter thermal convective forces. Then in the oceans add Coriolis Forces, the pumping effect of the Thermo-Haline circulation that drives the main ocean surface and bottom currents, and the shape of the sea floor and continents and you have a very complex system fo circulation patterns, that are certainly strong enough to overwhelm simple thermal convection towards the surface in some regions of the ocean, as shown in Meehl et al. But this isn't uniform across the oceans. In other regions where currents & gyres don't operate, the ocean can be strongly stratified. The most dramatic demonstration of this was during the 1950's, during the era of atomic testing. The USA tested a 'Depth Bomb', a nuclear Depth Charge - One explosion, guaranteed destruction of an enemy submarine. Several months after the test a research vessel returned to the area and took water samples, exploring how far the blast products had spread. They had horizontally over around 100 sq Kilometers. But the real surprise was vertical spread - to the best estimates they could make with the instruments they had, the blast products had only spread vertically in a laey 1 metre thick! After an nuclear blast, for stratification to re-establish so strongly shows how strong the forces driving vertical stratification are in the absence of other forces. What all this tells us is that transfer of anything in the oceans - heat, dissolved gases etc is a complex mixture major flows alongs the oceans 'highways', and virtually no flow outside the 'highways'. If the highways change their behaviour then significant changes in heat storage patterns are entirely possible. And this is why the simple argument often used by skeptics that 'heated water rises!' is wrong.
  37. Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
    Sphaerica @208, in Australia, and I presume in the US, knowingly making false statements with the purpose of obtaining money is fraud, and a criminal offense. Joseph Bast has purportedly written to his donors:
    "We have reported the identity theft and computer fraud to the police and to the FBI. We are asking the bloggers and reporters to immediately remove these documents and all statements about them from the blogs, Web sites, and publications, and to publish retractions. But we aren't holding our breath. The individuals who have commented so far on these documents did not wait for Heartland to confirm or deny the authenticity of the documents. We believe their actions constitute civil and possibly criminal offenses for which we can pursue charges and collect payment for damages, including damages to our reputation. Litigation is expensive, and it surely wasn't in our budget for 2012. But we don¹t think the criminals who did this ought to be allowed to skate away without penalty. We are creating a legal defense fund to support litigation, starting immediately, to demand that false and defamatory material be removed from blogs and Web sites and publications, and that the true criminals in this case be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Can you make a charitable contribution to our legal defense fund? You would be helping us defend ourselves against a cowardly and criminal attack. You would also help us take down a notch some of the left-wing activists and their friends who so plainly crossed the line this time."
    That is clearly a request for money, and the basis of that request includes the claim that he has taken the matter to police and FBI. If he has in fact not taken the matter to police and FBI, then a conviction for fraud will be hard to avoid. Assuming that he is not terminally stupid, it therefore, follows that Bast has indeed reported an incident of alleged "identity theft and computer fraud" to police and the FBI. In Australia,and presumably in the US, knowingly and falsely alleging a crime to police where none has been committed is also a criminal offense. Therefore again, excluding terminal stupidity, that indicates that Bast has not only reported an incident of alleged "identity theft and computer fraud" to police and the FBI, but he believes that identity theft and computer fraud to have occurred. Given that he believes that and is in a reasonable position to know (as we are not), the presumption must be that that is what occurred. Now it may be that Bast is wrong. For example, it may be that the person Bast sort information on in the issue is in fact the the person who sent the documents to desmogblog as an act of whistle blowing, and have falsely represented the case in order to cover their tracks. But that is a big assumption to make on a "maybe", and should not be the basis of our actions. What is more, if that is the case, it will undoubtedly emerge as the result of the police and/or FBI investigation. In that case we can revise our opinions when that emerges. In the meantime we lose nothing by assuming that the documents (excluding the 990 form) where obtained by criminal activity, and that the strategy document is a fraud.
  38. actually thoughtful at 14:15 PM on 17 February 2012
    Breaking News…The Earth Is Warming…Still!
    Owl905 - Please no! Lose means to reduce in quantity or not know where it is. Loose means not fitting well. The loose use of lose should not be codified - it should be banned.
  39. Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
    Sphaerica @ 208, Tim's main argument is that making a knowingly false complaint to the police would be stupid. If they have made such a complaint then their story is probably true. Could they have lied to donors about making such a complaint. Again, unlikely.
  40. Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
    205, Tom, You are starting from the premise that phishing was in fact the method by which the documents were obtained. The only evidence for this is the Heartland claim. If that claim is false, I'm not sure Best is guilty of fraud just for lying (or being mistaken) about the nature of the theft. He quite likely would not want to admit that he allowed someone (a disgruntled employee) access to his computer and files. This would not sit well with people who give you hundreds of thousands of dollars to be just a little more careful than that. It would be obstruction of justice if it were a lie and he said that to any official agents brought in to investigate the issue, but they would quickly see the e-mail records and such and corroborate the claim. If no authorities (beyond their own lawyers) are brought in, then there's no obstruction of justice. With that said... as I said, I do believe the document is a fake, and phishing is certainly the most plausible method. I'm merely pointing out that your logic is flawed. There is not sufficient evidence at present to arrive at the conclusion that the document must be a fake. [Again, I'm pretty sure it may be, but it doesn't much matter if it is or is not, outside of diminishing the impact of the entire release, which makes it's inclusion a tactical error of the gravest proportions, because it's going to give HI a lot of traction on avoiding the real, damning content of their documents, such as trying to influence elections in Wisconsin and influence what is actually taught in schools... can you imagine their furor if Greenpeace were exposed for an equivalent effort to influence curriculum in schools for environmental purposes?]
  41. Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
    Doug H, that's easily answered: http://heartland.org/marc-morano
  42. Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
    Gringo @ 171, I love the comment:
    We promise anonymity to many of our donors because nobody wants the risk of nutty environmentalists or Occupy Wall Street goons harassing them.
    On the other hand, it is fine for right wing-nuts to post email addresses of climate scientists like Katharine Hayhoe and incite their loyal nutty mercenaries to send the victim vicious and threatening emails, slash their victim's car tyres and generally harass them. I have been unable to find any evidence of the Heartland Institute decrying such behaviour and it strains credulity to suggest they don't know it is happening. As reported by Peter Sinclair at Climate Denial Crock of the Week:
    Hayhoe had her name and email contact published by the ever-cuddly Marc “climate scientists should be flogged” Morano, grand Wazir of the Sharia school of Climate denial.
    Such a nice chap. I wonder if he has his hand in the H.I. till, too.
  43. Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
    Sphaerica @203, it is always possible, for example, that a member of the board was part of a small strategy meeting before the main board meeting in which a paper document was distributed, and in which strategy was planned for the board meeting. It is further possible that that paper document was then taken back to LA or Seattle (or wherever) and scanned. However, somebody with access to a limited circulation document as suggested by this theory would not need to phish in order to get the other documents. Therefore, on evidence available the supposition must be that the strategy document is a fake. If it emerges that the purported email from Bast to donors is itself a fake, or that Bast is charged for fraud based on that email, then we have reason to revise that opinion. But as it stands, I believe we must accept and act on the belief that it is a fake.
  44. Climate Insights: a series of bite sized videos on climate science
    What is a climate model? is a cracker!
  45. Bert from Eltham at 13:08 PM on 17 February 2012
    Breaking News…The Earth Is Warming…Still!
    We live on a spherical rock with oceans of water and an atmosphere. Our only source of energy is the Sun. The recent period of an equilibrium of radiation from the Sun and the re-radiation back to space for the last thousands of years is where we adapted and flourished as a species. The weather we see in our atmosphere is a very poor analogy for the similar chaotic currents in our oceans. The time constants for both systems are completely different. But they are very similar. Hence the unpredictability. Us puny humans are trying to understand the changes we have made by our releasing or pollution of CO2 into our atmosphere. By measuring the change in atmospheric temperatures we get an indication of the damage we are doing. The ocean temperatures seem to be lagging far behind but are far more sinister for long term equilibrium. There is no doubt that greenhouse gases are the major driving forces that are the cause for the climate changes we are now seeing. Looking at one tiny local phenomena will not negate the whole picture. Anyone who promotes this as evidence is a fool or a liar. Bert
  46. Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
    Tom Curtis @ 201, I agree with your analysis. It looks like the act of someone with more zeal than judgment. Someone willing to use phishing to get these papers is all too likely to try to improve their haul. What do these papers show? Not much that we did not aready suspect. John Mashey's investigations have actually turned up far more. The main thing that they should do is to put the tax exempt status of the Heartland Institute under investigation.
  47. Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
    201, Tom, There is one flaw in all of that PDF-Pacific time logic. I'm not saying it's likely, but... physical copies of the strategy memo could have been delivered by hand/mail to people who then scanned and disseminated it electronically. It could also have been acquired by someone several weeks ago, when it was written, in Chicago, taken to the west coast, and scanned there at the last minute to include it with the other electronic documents. The fact that it came from a physical document really means that you can't prove anything from it (except that the leak/thief, or one of the recipients of the documents, was in the Pacific time zone a few days ago). I'm not saying this is likely, and my personal feeling is that it is a fake... there's just no reason for a memo like that to be written, and with a somewhat more churlish tone than the other, more professional sounding documents. It doesn't say much of anything that doesn't appear elsewhere. It's redundant and useless. It's also a wholly unnecessary inclusion. The rest of the documents are damning enough on their own. There's no reason for anyone to pretty-up some quotable variations on a theme.
  48. Video of Chuck Kutscher debunking climate skeptic arguments
    Wow! Great presentation! He hit all the major denial points. I've been looking for something like this. ... I'd love to show this at work for a lunch & learn. It ought to turn some heads. ... I'll definitely be posting on facebook! Thanks, John, for posting. And, thanks andylee for youtube link.
  49. Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
    200, Camburn, I never said any. You think the US military and the CIA should be required to divulge all information? On research... if we have researchers working on brilliant and novel new energy sources or engineering techniques, do you think that information should be available to other countries and private investors to exploit? No, obviously not. Research is already well monitored and governed by the universities, peers and funding sources that grant those funds. That sort of openness is not required. "Charitable organizations," however, appear free to do anything they please to further the interests of either specific industries or the people who got rich in those industries, while skirting tax laws and hiding the true nature of their efforts. Unlike you, I'm not in the least bit concerned about some nefarious scientist secretly plotting to clone Joseph Stalin from the hairs on one of his old brushes. I am concerned about people who already have substantially more power and influence than other people further exploiting the system to work to their benefit.
  50. Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
    On current evidence we should now regard the "strategy document as a fake. In particular Joseph Bast has now reportedly brought in the police to investigate a matter of identity theft. If he has no reason to suspect identity theft, that makes him liable for criminal charges. If he claims to have brought the matter before police in a fund raising document, while not having done so, that makes him liable for fraud. Therefore the presumption must be that some of the documents where obtained by phishing. It should be noted that Duke C, in a comment at Lucia's Blackboard, claims to have time stamps of the "strategy" document that breaks it down to Greenwich Mean Time plus offset, providing evidence that the strategy document was scanned in the Pacific time zone of the US (or equivalent in Canada, or Mexico etc). As the Heartland Institute does not have offices on the West Coast, it follows that the document was almost certainly not scanned in HI offices. It is not reasonable to believe that a person so remote from the HI offices as the US West Coast would have a physical copy of the strategy document, but also need to phish in order to get copies of the other documents (excluding the 990 form). Therefore, in order to have such a document they must have created it themselves, or had it created by an accomplice. Hence, by my estimation on current evidence, it is very likely (>90% probability) that the document is a fake. It should further be noted that my earlier inference that this is an internal job is flawed. Specifically the 990 form which was not phished is, apparently, published on the web and has been for some time. Therefore, while it was accessed before December 6th, 2011, and was not phished, that could have been done by any interested person. Finally, the most reasonable conclusion given this evidence is that the leaked information, like that for the University of East Anglia, was obtained by criminal activity. This certainly gives reasonable grounds to have ethical qualms about discussing and distributing information contained within the documents. Everybody must look to their own conscience on that point.

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