Earth from space.
Image: NASA
Leaked documents from the free-market conservative organization The Heartland Institute reveal a plan to create school educational materials that contradict the established science on climate change.
The documents, leaked by an anonymous donor and released on DeSmogBlog, include the organization's 2012 fundraising plan. It lists Heartland Institute donors, from the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation (established by Koch Industries billionaire Charles G. Koch), to Philip Morris parent company Altria, to software giant Microsoft and pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly.
The climate change education project is funded so far by an anonymous donor who has given $13 million to the Institute over the past five years. Proposed by policy analyst David Wojick, who holds a doctorate in epistemology and has worked for coal and electricity generation companies, the project would create education "modules" written to meet curriculum guidelines for every grade level.
"Many people lament the absence of educational material suitable for K-12 students on global warming that isn't alarmist or overtly political," the report reads. "Heartland has tried to make material available to teachers, but has had only limited success."
Funding skepticism
Heartland focuses on free-market issues across the board, including promoting charter schools, lobbying for business-friendly finance, insurance and real estate rules and promoting prescription drug availability before full Food and Drug Administration testing.
In the area of climate change, the leaked documents revealed that the group funds vocal climate skeptics, including Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change founder Craig Idso ($11,600 per month), physicist Fred Singer ($5,000 plus expenses per month), and New Zealand geologist Robert Carter ($1,667 per month). They've also pledged $90,000 to skeptical meteorologist Anthony Watts, who blogs at WattsUpWithThat.com.
The documents also reveal a communications strategy aimed at "keep[ing] opposing voices out" of publications such as Forbes Magazine, where the audience is "reliably anti-climate."
On the education front, Wojick would be paid $5,000 per module, or $25,000 per quarter, according to the report's tentative estimates, to produce the Heartland climate curricula. The Institute's anonymous donor has pledged $100,000 to the project, which the Institute hopes to match from other donors.
Each module would inject skepticism into the scientific consensus on climate change. Example statements in the report include: "Whether humans are changing the climate is a major scientific controversy;" "Models are used to explore various hypotheses about how climate works. Their reliability is controversial;" and "Whether CO2 [carbon dioxide] is a pollutant is controversial." The modules would also teach that the idea of carbon dioxide as a pollutant is "controversial," arguing that carbon dioxide is crucial to life on Earth and that natural emissions are 20 times those of human emissions.
Creating controversy
In fact, while some of these statements may be politically controversial, they are not particularly scientifically controversial. For example, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2007 Fourth Assessment Report, which synthesizes global scientific findings about climate change, states: "Since the start of the industrial era (about 1750), the overall effect of human activities on climate has been a warming influence. The human impact on climate during this era greatly exceeds that due to known changes in natural processes, such as solar changes and volcanic eruptions."
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113 Comments
Add CommentMore like shame on you for parroting their lies.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMan will accelerate the extinction of man. Greed will be the principal driver of this well deserved extinction.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow can Sceintific America maintain any credibility when they use terms like 'established sceince.' We relvolve around the sun because we actually do, not because there is a consensus. There is NO settled sceince by definition.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt would be nice if the folks writing these sorts of articles would stop referring to these people as "skeptics". They are not skeptical, a skeptic can be convinced by evidence. These people are anti-science. It's an accurate title.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe test to determine who is anti-science is simple; just ask them this question: In your own personal opinion, what specific evidence would have to be presented to convince you that the scientific theory of AGW is correct?
A skeptic can answer it with "I don't know", or they could state something specific they feel would be significant. Only someone who is anti-science cannot answer that question.
The anti-science types either don't know what evidence is already available and don't want to make themselves look like even bigger idiots if it turns out what they want is already at hand, or else they don't know enough about climate science to be able to name something that might have a plausible link to global climate change.
Either way the science will make them look ridiculous.
Please call them anti-science. They want to be called anti- everything else; anti-abortion, anti-tax, anti-big government, anti-gay marriage. Use the naming convention they have chosen, they are anti-science.
When the climate turns to crap and statistically it's no longer possible to deny the excess deaths due to climate change, someone needs to take the Heartland execs (along with their pals at Exxon, Peabody, Cato, BP etc.) to the Hague for crimes against humanity.
I mean that in all seriousness. They need to be held accountable for the pointless deaths and for the trillions of dollars it's going to cost the world to fix their neo-fascist insanity and clean up the atmosphere.
@Fearless Bear, it's a sign of desperation that you make a gratuitous reference to National Socialism and global war in an attempt to make an unfounded association in the minds of readers. Your tactic is, when you have nothing, point the finger and smear!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI invoke Godwin's law. Good riddance to this thread.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@mlbbchbill.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI do wish you would learn that CO2 traps heat because it does and that is observable in the laboratory and in nature. This a fact and their is a consensus because the fact is recognized.
Well, folks, it's probably too late anyway. With no real effort to save the planet we are most likely headed for extinction or at least an enormous reduction in the animal populations including us, humans.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSadly, the Hague will be occupied prosecuting those who stood in the way of the oil companies.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEven more sadly, cleaning up the atmosphere is NOT something that humans can, or should do. The law of unintended consequences fully applies to human folly, and the very notion that humans can reverse engineer this problem is folly of the highest order. Humans need to adapt to the conditions they have created, despite the fact that change will appear faster than they now believe.
Geoengineering will only cause another set of problems on top of the existing set of problems - ammunition that the skeptical, denying, anti-science types will use to make a bad situation worse.
[luhng - congratulations on learning that basic fact. Next year, the 5th grade science class has some more basic information for you]
The claims about Heartland and their wrongdoings are true.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSorry if you are insulted, but there's something wrong with your thinking.
CO2 combines with other gases easily and they DO warm and harm the planet. It's a simple proven FACT.
Read about the problems the planet is having world wide do to climate changes.
Are you cheap and don't want to clean up the pollution we have caused?
Are you a paid denier too?
Stupid people say stupid things.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTrue, CO2 traps heat. No one disputes that.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe question is wheather the amount of heat trapping is significant or insignificant.
The IPCC blessed climate models all operate on the inherent assumption that there is a positive feedback that amplifies CO2's effect.
Real world results indicate no amplification or a very minimal negative feedback; ie, more CO2 temperatures drop slightly. And before you ask, go google it yourself. Nullius in Verba; which is latin for "I don't give a hoot, go check it out for yourself"
As to funding, Greenpeace, WWF, and Sierra Club have combined budgets in the $Billions, bot counting $$Billions more from Congress on projects that they approve.
The Eco-corporations having a snit about what amounts to spilled coffee money is hilarious.
Oh and by the way, it's not "Anti Climate Science Education". That term is merely a political invention.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe real issue is that "Climate Science" is "Climate Indoctrination" and a lot of people see through the mealy worded ploy. AGW must earn it's way, and so far it hasn't.
Having said all that, as a proud, unwashed heathen skeptic, I will state for the record, that if data and predictions are made that show AGW to be a real threat, I will gladly shave, shower and put on a hemp shirt and help Occupy something.
Until some real data shows up, I keep asking questions.
Sorry if that makes you True Believers upset. Get over it. Science isn't a Jr. High popularity contest.
Godwin's Law confirmed by post #2...You guys are getting quicker on the trigger!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo, how about the FACT that the Earth's albedo gets lower as ice melts? Isn't that a positive feedback? How about the FACT that warmer ocean water cannot absorb CO2 as quickly? Isn't that a positive feedback? How about the FACT that permafrost releases billions of tons of methane as it melts? Isn't that a positive feedback? How about the FACT that when you disrupt climate patterns, vegetation gets destroyed and burns and / or decays, releasing MORE CO2? Isn't that a positive feedback?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisClouds can both heat and cool, but the warmer air temperatures and higher humdity caused by AGW produce enhanced cloud effects that are a weekly POSITIVE feedback. So....clouds won't save us.
That laughibly incorrect negative CO2 feedback Anthony Watts tied himself in knots to present was very telling in how his denier mind works. The paper said that H20 per air volume had increased over the 20th Century and that's all that really matters. That relative humidity decreased a little (generally) doesn't matter to the radiative heat transfer between the Earth's surface and space. The fact that Mr. Watts thinks it DOES means he's REALLY ignorant. BTW, you never responded to my rebuttal on this issue, so I just assume once again that you are retreating from this debate in defeat.
So I ask for the upteenth time...what do you think is the most likely value for the Earth's climate sensitivity that you use to form your opinions on climate change. Since you already accept that CO2 traps heat, I need to understand where you are on climate sensitivity. In addition, what evidence would convince you that AGW is a problem? Do you think it's possible to change your mind?
If this doesn't give you cause for concern, I don't know what will:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://thinkprogress.org/romm/2010/12/14/207198/southwest-drought-global-warmin/
I know that you'll find "flaws" with some inane aspect of this research, or that you'll conflate this research with past climate predictions that you think failed. I get it...climate denial is only possible with epistemic closure on the issue, but I don't know how you go dismissing established science and the consensus of EVERY MAJOR SCIENTIFIC body in the world and not be worried. The fact that the worst case scenarios are unimaginably bad should prompt us to stay as far away from those possibilities as we can.
This comes as no surprise. Since lobbying by the fossil fuel sector has a 50-to-1 ANNUAL return on investment in the form of subsidies, it's only natural that propaganda would be another investment opportunity for them. Heck, it beats developing clean energy technologies that will only invalidate their business model sooner or later! The funny thing is, a lot of this money is classified as "charitable donations" and is tax deductable by those Koch types.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJoe Romm wrote about this "charitable" designation:
"Those Heartland folks are such satirists. Philanthropy “etymologically means the love of humanity,” whereas funding climate denial and inaction, as the Kochs do, is perhaps the cruelest thing you could possibly do to humanity."
To the Bowel Land Foundation: I'm willing to become an AGW "skeptic" for money. Please leave a message.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am a conservative. Please, tell me what the agenda is. The only agenda I'm aware of is to increase and then ensure freedom from government oppression. If there's more than that, no one at the secret meetings told me.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisListen Chicken Little, I’ve heard it all before. The Ice Age predicted in the 1970s came to nothing, as did Y2K, and the population bomb. Every couple of years the Department of Health and Welfare cries that we’re all going to die from some flu be it the recent swine flue, something from Hong Kong or SARS. Al Gore predicted the world’s end within a decade. The prediction was made in 1992 and we’re still here TWO decades later.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow do people keep making these outrageous claims expect anyone to believe the next one? I’m sure that one day the world will end as predicted by someone, and then I’ll have to say, “You were right. After hundreds of such predictions over the past decades, one of them finally came true!”
That is false. The donors mentioned in the leaks are already confirming the fact that they have given money.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUPDATE: Heartland Documents Stolen and key one is Fake. No “insider” leak.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://joannenova.com.au/
Also same site: The believers of man-made-weather-disasters are wetting themselves with excitement. It painful to watch grown men drool.
Poor things, they were really wounded by Climategate, and they’ve been waiting, praying that some day someone would level the playing field and show that skeptics were just as petty, shameless, and money-grubbing as their team turned out to be (not to mention hypocritical, deceptive and incompetent). In their dreams.
Instead the hyped non-denier-gate shows just how incredibly successful the Heartland Institute is. Look at the numbers. The skeptics have managed to turn the propaganda around against a tide of money, and it is really some achievement.
…
Entity USD
Greenpeace $300m 2010 Annual Report
WWF $700m ” ($524m Euro)
Pew Charitable Trust $360m 2010 Annual Report
Sierra Club $56m 2010 Annual Report
NSW climate change fund (just one random govt example) $750m NSW Gov (A$700m)
Heartland Institute $6.4m
US government funding for climate science and technology $7,000m “Climate Money” 2009
US government funding for “climate related appropriations” $1,300m USAID 2010
Annual turnover in global carbon markets $120,000m 2010 Point Carbon
Annual investment in renewable energy $243,000m 2010 BNEF
US government
Nice damage control!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"They leapt to their defamatory conclusions in a smear-fest."
Ummmm...no...Joe Romm said:
"Racing around the internet are some internal documents that appear to be from the Heartland Institute..."
Emphasis on the word APPEAR. Dr. Romm continues:
"If these documents are real, they revealed the desperate efforts of a fringe denial group to deceive children and ruin their future. No, this must be from the brilliant staff at The Onion. And they almost had us fooled!
UPDATE: I have updated this post. Heartland has not denied the authenticity of any of the excerpts now quoted here. They assert these documents were acquired through trickery and are asking people not to write about any of this — but that plea sounds like more satire given what they wrote about the stolen Climategate emails..."
So yes, when someone MIGHT have illegally stolen their documents, we're not allowed to write about it, but when a hacker illegally steals climate scientists' PERSONAL emails, the it's all fair game right?
And JoNova is a TOTALLY UNBIASED site, right?
13. Bops Stupid people say stupid things.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat’s OK . Didn’t take you seriously anyway.
What about the funding. You & your friends complain when a pittance is spent countering bad science while the true propagandists get billions.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYeah, because Greenpeace et. al. spend %100 of their funds on climate change, right? How about this:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisExxon - 4th quarter CY 2011 profits: $9.4B
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/exxon-mobils-profit-up-2-as-production-falls-2012-01-31
Or about $38B PER YEAR in profits, HALF of which they use to buy back their own stock...
Per dollar, the funding going to Heritage and other corporate mouthpieces drums up 10x - 100x the media attention than what Sierra Club et. al. can attain, EVEN if you cut Fox Noise out of the picture. It's because the media can't get enough of contrarian nonsense and "man bites dog" stories the appear to show scientists are wrong on some issue. For example, look at the amount of coverage over "Climategate" versus the non-existent coverage of the 9 separate vindications of climate science that showed ALL the allegations to be false.
It is going to be interesting to see how far the anti-pollution, the anti-environment, the anti-science, the anti-child, the anti-government, the anti-clean energy, the anti-family, and the anti-health care GOP can go and how many idiots are following them. It blows my mind that the GOP is so anti-clean and healthy and prefer to live in a cesspool of lies, deceit and deception. These people are the prime example of everything that should be burning in Hell's Fire and Damned Nation. Why don't these people just buy themselves an island somewhere and turn it into the garbage can that they want to turn America into; and to think that I was willing to give my life in two branches of the military to protect these stupid idiots. Thank their God for our science and intelligence.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSounding a lot like an old time fire & brimstone preacher there old timer. I note the Democrats are going to spend a few million on nuclear power.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo there really is a secret conspiracy on climate change after all, and it’s from the right. HA! Thought so all along.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt did sound a bit like one of those damn yahoo southern preachers, didn't it. The democrats allotted those millions for those two nuclear power plants in Georgia that the republicans wanted so the republicans would pass the budget. The way the republicans have destroyed the American economy, and everything else in their reach, those nuclear power plants will probably never fire up. There is not a resonance in America for nuclear power that is provided by those kind of plants; they are too dangerous and too expensive; the resonance is for clean energy. By the time those two plant fire up, if they ever do, they will have cost the taxpayer and the utility customers close to $100 billion dollars and your utility bill is going to skyrocket. Can we really afford something that dangerous and that expensive?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen emails from a pro-AGW university are outed it's called theft but when it's from a skeptical AGW group it's called leaked.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLooks like a biased moral judgment to me.
This will go on until individuals like yourself learn the following:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this-Having achieved a high degree of success does not make you an environment-raping anti-American, science denier.
-People who use absolutes like "always" are immune to any facts that do not mesh with their preconceived world view.
What would a conservative retort be without a reference to Nazis?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNot that it undermines your point, but I think you mean "science" rather than "sceince".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisExactly, we don't know EXACTLY what Earth's climate sensitivity is. However, it is EXTREMELY UNLIKELY to be below 2C for doubled CO2 (560 ppm):
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-sensitivity-advanced.htm
Even if, in the %5 cumulative probability that climate sensitivity is 2C, that STILL means that we need to seriously cut emissions very soon.
If you argue that climate sensitivity is lower than 2C, you need to identify and describe several negative feedbacks that can explain the wild climate swings in the past like glacial periods, the LIA and other periods. Since the multiple lines of evidence highlighted in the article actually converge on a 3C climate sensitivity, the burden of proof is that much HIGHER.
The burden of proof is on the prosecution. Case dismissed for lack of evidence. Theories & models do not constitute truth. Oceans not warming for one of many fails.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI suppose the drug companies (Elli Lily, GlaxoSmithKline, etc) want to continue cashing in on illness (asthma, heart disease, cancer) generated or exacerbated by air pollution, but what does Microsoft get from this? Totally surprised by this.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYour favourite gets pasted.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIs there a human fingerprint?
Cook: “The scientific literature at the time [of the 1995 Second Assessment Report of the IPCC] clearly demonstrated a number of ‘fingerprints’ of human-caused global warming.”
Reply: The scientists’ final draft of the 1995 Report said plainly, on five separate occasions, that no evidence of an anthropogenic influence on global climate was detectable, and that it was not known when such an influence would become evident.
However, a single scientist, Dr. Ben Santer of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, rewrote the draft at the IPCC’s request, deleting all five statements, replacing them with a single statement to the effect that a human influence on global climate was now discernible, and making some 200 consequential amendments.
These changes were considered by a political contact group, but they were not referred back to the vast majority of the authors whose texts Dr. Santer had tampered with, and whose five-times-stated principal conclusion he had single-handedly and unjustifiably negated.
We now have the evidence of Prof. “Phil” Jones of the University of East Anglia, in one of the recently-released Climategate emails, that the warming of the past century falls well within the natural variability of the climate – consistent with the conclusion that Dr. Santer had negated.
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/02/cooking-the-books-monckton-replies-to-cook/#more-20133
Absolute proof is not found in science; try preponderance of evidence. Check the definition of theory in science as yours is incorrect. Models do not constitute truth (whatever that is, they support observations and provide a mechanism for making prediction.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOceans are warming Physics world May 2010
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"the oceans have warmed at a rate of about 0.64 ± 0.11 W/m2 over the past 16 years. According to Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, this is "reasonably consistent with expectations from other indications of global warming".
Holy crap! Are you republicans really that stupid and twisted that you cannot see the man made pollutants in L.A.? Do you not think all those CO1s are not going into our environment? You really cannot be that stupid, can you?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"The burden of proof is on the prosecution. Case dismissed for lack of evidence. Theories & models do not constitute truth. "
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNice attempt to confuse courtroom procedure with science and appeal to ignorance. Your masters must be proud.
Old data. Check the Argos readings.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2814864/posts
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPosted on Friday, 2 December 2011 8:30:48 AM by Ernest_at_the_Beach
The Travesty of the Missing Heat — deep ocean or outer space?
How can climate sensitivity be 3C in the past but is lower now for some magical reason. This ISN'T from models, it's the temperature record and paleoclimate data. However, models that incorporate a 3C climate sensitivity are very accurate:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.skepticalscience.com/search.php?Search=Predictions_150
And the feedbacks aren't just theoretical constructs either. We have OBSERVED methane leaking from the permafrost. You can light this stuff on FIRE as it bubbles up from tundra swamps all over Northern Russia and Canada. Finally, after a few decades of holding steady, methane levels are once again increasing in the atmosphere.
Melting Arctic ice has led to a large drop in the Earth's albedo, especially in the summer and early fall when the region receives the most sunlight. Additionally, open ocean can transfer much more heat to the air above it compared to ocean covered in ice pack. This is why we're having increasingly weird winter weather.
So, since you believe that climate sensitivity is merely a modeling construct, you are demonstrably wrong. A climate sensitivity of 3C is backed up by modeling, paleoclimate data and the temperature record. If each source produced a wildly different sensitivity value, I'd be skeptical too. The fact that they converge on 3C is a very powerful indicator of how robust this figure actually is.
Arguing for a lower sensitivity means you have to pick apart EACH of these lines of evidence and I don't see deniers even TRYING, now do you? All they're doing is taking money from fossil fuel companies as shown in these leaked documents and trying to spread doubt. Funny how the Heartland Institute takes money from tobacco combanies and is employing the same tactic it used to get the public to ignore the connection with their client's product and lung cancer: lie and spread doubt about the science.
Re Post # 52 http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2012/01/missing-ocean-heat-explained.ars
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWell that is an admission that the heat isn’t there explained by an admission that climate science had their facts wrong to start with. Still looks like a fail to me. Ill put it in the same basket as the pathetic explanations for the emails. The waste basket.
Some arguments are way denser than anything in the periodic table. Has it been peer reviewed? As a matter of fact it has not & no other climate scientist that I can find is in the least interested in it. One reason is that it is not easy to transport surface heat into the deep ocean. For a start you must have warm surface water that is carried via a surface current towards the Polar Regions where it cools & sinks & a deep ocean current carries the now cold water back towards the equator. But first you must have warm surface water. The recent readings show that if anything, these temperatures are falling so how is this proposition a possible explanation?
Even most climate scientists now admit that the heating they were predicting, mostly into the oceans, simply is not happening. Where is it? Is it just conceivable that the models are wrong? All this additional Co2 & no forcing. There has been methane escaping ever since the last ice age, as well as oil & gas. Alarmist nonsence. How do you think the methane got there in the first place? Would not be from a warmer past with vegetation in areas now exposed by naturally receding ice would it? We are still coming out of the last ice age. What do you expect?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMore like denialist nonsense...If you can't understand how fossil fuels are formed and how their extraction messes up the Carbon Cycle, then you're hopeless...If you don't know how the tundra biome and the permafrost under it operates, I'm not going to waste my time debating telling you facts that you have a willing disregard for.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd why do I have to keep explaining these things to you? We're not "coming out" of the last glacial period, we're supposed to be heading into the next glacial period 3,000 years from now. If you even LOOKED at the temperature record, you would realize that the "recovering from the last ice age" canard is utterly false. Interglacials hardly EVER last more than 10,000 years, so how come we're magically on the warming 1st half of the current one? Where do you get this stuff?
What gets me is that we SEE the forcing of extra CO2 in the atmosphere! Satellites have detected drops in Earth's spectral emissions at the same frequencies that CO2, CFCs, N2O and water vapor absorb. We ALREADY SEE a 1.7 W/m2 retention in heat energy via from human emissions. If you deny these FACTS, I don't know how you even manage to type out a sentence on your computer. If you're going to deny basic reality, why do you not deny the scientific theory and engineering that made your computer feasible or the Internet you use to spread your ignorance?
Where's the consistency?
You may be right, but that might be all right too. If you consider that science is sort of telling us that the population of the earth is too big, and is worsening, then a self correction is not a bad thing. So bottom line, if we don't do it, the earth will, and I have trouble seeing what is so bad about that. Looked at from outside the human sphere, we appear to be a pest, don't we?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEnvironmental scientists need to do a better job of explaining the theory. I don't think I have an agenda and believe that global warming is real. But is not unreasonable to be sceptical about the fact that the added 5% of CO2 from humans is a pollutant and may destroy much life on our planet but the CO2 from natural causes is perfectly fine. It just requires some better explaining to make such a subtle point!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhere is the heat retention? It was supposed to be in the oceans but it is not.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisReal science is always open to new analysis. We haven't even proved how gravity works. What is all the flap about somebody questioning findings of human-caused climate change? Real scientists welcome skepticism, encourage it actually. Fact is, nothing about climate change is proved. All we know is that the information some people have gathered seems to lead them to certain conclusions when they use specific computer models. As far as it goes, that is fine science. What isn't science is to reject any other analysis or any different perspectives. We want our scientists to ask questions and doubt the conclusions other folks jump to. We want children to be educated to doubt assumptions and ask questions. That all sounds fine to me.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo you claim we are not still coming out of the last Ice Age. What about the Mini Ice Age? We have not got back to the Warming Period temperatures yet. The Mini Ice Age temporarily halted the Earths warming since the last Ice Age, then it resumed. When did we cease coming out of the last Ice Age? If we are entering a new Ice Age, why are you trying to prove against the evidence, that the Earths temperature is catastrophically rising because of mans activity? Me thinks confusion rules in your camp.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo what is really going on? Just a little upward blip in the rate of long term temperature increase that has, or is returning to the long term trend. Weather or climate? How exactly do YOU define the difference?
No offense, but does it really matter? I have never really understood what anti-global warming people are fighting for. I mean would it really hurt anyone to keep our air and water cleaner. Even if you take global warming out the equation, their are undeniable health benefits to cleaner air and water. So all anti-global warming people want is the ability to make more of a mess? That is just like a two year old that doesn't want to clean up their toys or mop their spills.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTracey it is the billions of dollars being wasted in a futile attempt to alter the global weather. Adaption is the only alternative coupled with action to stop waste & needless polution. It is wastefull & harmfull to burn coal to produce electricity when nuclear is infinitely cleaner.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm sorry, I have been trying to avoid the obnoxious media circus for most of the past year. Could you please give me some examples of the billions of dollars being spent to alter the global weather? I have heard of many strange plans to stop global warming but I hadn't heard that any were actually put in effect. In terms of investments in alternative energy strategies I completely support them. I don't understand why anyone would be against cleaner ways to make energy. In terms of nuclear energy-there are pros and cons. I don't really think that is going to be the long term solution to our country's energy needs.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlternative energy is a beautiful fuzzy warm dream. I spent seven years researching & producing solar & alternative energy systems. I stopped when I could not escape the conclusion that no matter how much you spend, the sun does not shine 24/7 nor the wind blow or any of the other alternatives. Nuclear energy is the only alternative & the scare campaign about it is absolutely disgracefull. While thousands die every year mining coal for power generation & untold thousands from coal pollution, the greatest number of fatalities was in Chernobyl & that was less than fifty people, none from the multi reactor disaster in japan, not even anyone with radiation sickness.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is incredibly wasteful to build windmills & solar farms & bio fuel systems that only chew up resources & rob wealth from worthwhile projects like health & third world infrastructure & education as a small list of things that should have more priority.
If you want to know what is being spent on alternative energy systems go back a little read my post #24
If you care to research the promises made by all these schemes as aposed to what they have actually delivered you will understand why I fight these people. it is not just that they are wrong about the climate but that the vast majority are also wrong about the solutions they promote. feeling warm & fuzzy about something that doesent work is costing millions of people the oportunity to have cheap, abundant 7 by comparison with existing, clean energy. take the trouble to learn about nuclear. hint, you will not get the truth from allarmist sites.
Sorry about lack of spell checking etc
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's actually around a %40 increase in CO2 concentrations since the 1800s and is the highest it's been in 15 - 20 MILLION years:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.skepticalscience.com/human-co2-smaller-than-natural-emissions-intermediate.htm
This has caused 1.7W/m2 of extra heat flux to be retained by the earth and the Earth's temperature to rise by 0.8C already. When you get CO2 concentrations to 560ppm (or 2x the pre-industrial concentration of 280ppm) the heat flux retained increases to 3.7 W/m2 and that should raise the Earth's temperature by 3C:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/empirical-evidence-for-co2-enhanced-greenhouse-effect-advanced.htm
The ratio of the forcings is not the same as the ratio of the output temperature increases because the climate system has a lot of thermal inertia, so we haven't seen ALL the warming from our previous emissions yet, and the fact that a lot of cooling aerosols are emitted along with our industrial CO2, masking some of its effect. In addition, there are several positive feedbacks in the climate system that amplify the temperature response of these forcings. Ice melts and the darker surfaces beneath it absorb more solar energy, amplifying the initial forcing. The oceans can't absorb CO2 as quickly when they are warmer, trapping ever increasing quantities of the gas in the atmosphere in response to the initial warming. The world's permafrost is melting and it releases methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, in the process, amplifying the initial warming. These are the major positive feedbacks and there are many others that I fail to mention, but you get the idea. The negative feedbacks in the climate system are MUCH slower than the positive feedbacks and we are degrading some them by clearing natural vegetation and dumping pollution all over the place.
Did you even READ the article about how volcanoes kicked off the "Mini Ice Age"? I distinctly remember seeing several of your comments below it...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOh, and you should apologize for the ABSOLUTE LACK of ANY sources to back up your silly claims. Oh, but don't tell the Germans about your renewable energy nightmares; they get over %20 of their electricity from renewables!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe German experience with alternative energy is actually a disaster economically & will not be maintained in the longer term. The public will eventually wake up to the folly. Their energy costs are amongst the highest in Europe. Compare them with the French who rely mostly on nuclear. Some of their spare they sell to the Germans. The higher the reliance on alternative energy the higher the energy costs. Spains experience is another disaster.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI can not be bothered with your rantings. There is a theory about the mini Ice Age as there are theories about the major Ice Ages as there are theories about the recent blip. Such a blip in earlier times would not even show above the long term average.
Your reliance on the sceptical science blog is like invoking Peter Pan to prove your point. A more blatantly partisan site for the AGW/Climate change fairytale would be hard to find. Moreover they lied about the substance of this so called leak as my link at #24 shows.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt,s about time somebody did something to counteract this global warming/climate change crap. It has been warming since the end of the last ice age and all the fear-mongering in the world is not going to affect that.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIs your comment in any way related to the article? Are you a spambot or paid poster that just runs a search for "climate change"? Too bad this story is actually uncovering a little piece of the climate denial machine brought to you by Exxon, Koch industries and Peabody Coal.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI would only like to make a side commentary. You do not need a PhD degree to sense that what comes out from an exhaust pipe in a car or any other internal combustion engine is poisonous. Of course improvements have been made and now exhaust pipe gases are less dangerous than just a few years ago. My feeling is that we will create an internal combustion engine entirely safe for the environment. On the other hand the ideas about greenhouse effect gases and the ozone layer holes deserves very serious consideration. So it seems we waste our time paying attention to these "anti-science individuals". But they are also good to the extent that that criticism makes us to laugh or to sharpen our weapons against climate change and against pollution. Let us hope in time truth and good sense prevail. I have not study in depth this matter and we should avoid offensive expressions like "anti-science individuals". I call them that way just for short, easy. quick communication. Not offense intended. I think we all want cities, and the whole world, entirely free of pollution and we want to breath clear, fresh air. We had better take good care of this planet; it is the only one we got so far. And even if we have a thousandfold like ours not far from us we should live in harmony with nature, here and everywhere.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou claim that post #71 ConinCalgary does not in any way relate to the article.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNeither does your post #15,16,39,52,55,56,67,68 & 72.
ConinCalgary sault thinks he owns this site. Do not let him bluff you with his bullying bluster backed up by rehems of pseudo science mostly found on a nondescript website called skeptical science. That site repeats any pro AGW propoganda it can find uncritically. For him the AGW theory is everything Real world data such as the lack of ocean warming consistant with Co2 forcing predictions, count for nothing. His criticism of your post is typical of his behaviour. To top it all off he rejects nuclear power as a means of reducing reliance on carbon based fuel & wants us to use pixi dust solutions that have already cost billions, have proven to be innefective & have frequently exacerbated waste of resources as well as contributing to polution.
Sorry, spellchecker playing up on me again.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe fact that you keep parroting that "ocean heating" canard ad nauseum even after we showed you it is a red herring means that YOU don't care about the facts. If you go to skepticalscience.com and read ANY of the debunkings of climate denier arguments, you will ALLWAYS find peer-reviewed science to back it up. I know, scrolling through an article to see all the references and links to scientific papers is hard...ACTUALLY READING those papers is harder still. If Anthony Watts can't be bothered to read the papers he ACTUALLY SOURCES, then I guess I shouldn't expect you to go above and beyond that hopelessly low standard he sets.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut please answer me this. How come the climate denier argument has changed from "CO2 ins't increasing" to "Mankind's emissions are small" to "It stopped warming in 1998...no, wait! 2002! Or was it 2005?" to "Ocean heat is missing"? Why has skepticalscience.com compiled 173 DIFFERENT CLIMATE DENIER MYTHS? How come your "side" needs to debate using the kitchen sink approach and changes its argument every time it's proven wrong? How come they can't unite on 1 or 2 of their strongest arguments and the scientific community could either address them or disprove them? How come climate deniers are adopting the "Teach the Controversy" strategy that Creationists have used for the last few years? Think there's something in common?
As I have said, quoting sceptical science,defending the emails, using a non peer reviewed report not supported by other climate scientists to explain away missing ocean heat, championing failed energy policies, accusing others of not sticking to the subject all demonstrate your inability to accept reality.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI note your: 'after WE showed you it is a red herring'
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat is with the 'we' & your frequent quoting of sceptical science. Trying to drive traffic to that site are we dana1981? Have a look folk. http://www.skepticalscience.com/team.php
The many comments posted to this thread by signature «Carlyle» bring to mind the dying Talbot's famous observation, «[m]it der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens». In this particular case, I suspect that «der Gier» could also be added to «der Dummheit». But at least the poster is not so stupid as to post under his or her (I strongly suspect «his») real name....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHenri
Sorry for the diacritics - for some strange reason the SA site does not seem to accept UTF-8 characters....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHenri
Your post #81 'It has been generally cooling since the end of the last ice age.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you can't be bothered to get the kindergarten stuff right you should just keep your supremely ignorant, kindergarten level factoids to yourself as they are worse than worthless.'
Even sault would not say something as stupid as that.
When I am criticised by someone who just claimed that the earth has generally been cooling since the last ice age, I accept the compliment.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYour graphic & others do indeed indicate that the earth has on average been cooling since the last ice age with the coolest period being the last 2000 years. The earth has been warming since the mini ice age. This warming started well before industrialisation or human influence was a factor. Present warming still falls short of the period prior to the mini ice age. We are still rebounding from the mini ice age.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYour post #87. First link is to surface temperature only & is up to 2009.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe second link also is for the period up to 2009'surface temperatures only & disputes the claims of record highs & also points out in relation to the arctic ocean area the measurements were of a tiny section of ocean. The overall tone is that the claims of record high surface temperatures were alarmist & inaccurate.
Neither site addresses the total ocean heat storage or even down to modest depths. Certainly not the Argos records.
Carlyle- Just want you to know how much I enjoy your posts. It is nice to hear a voice of reason and sanity on a warmist blog (SA). Keep up the good fight, brother, and I'd love to buy you a beer some day. LOL!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThanks postman1 :)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTake a look at this figure and I DARE you to say we're still "recovering from the last Ice Age":
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vostok_Petit_data.svg
Willing disregard of the facts and reality is dangerous, man!
I admitted that I was mistaken on that point according to a number of sites I have visited. With regard to our present temperature compared to prior to the mini ice age, who do you believe? Previous short term spikes are smoothed out for starters. There is widespread disagreement about the minimum temperature, the global distribution etc. The proxies that are relied upon cover a miniscule portion of the globe. The graphs simply do not correspond with the actual historically recorded climate during the medieval warming either. Agriculture in England & other parts of Europe indicate a much warmer period.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEven our present records are suspect. The methods used to calculate global temperatures are far from perfect, especially when a value for the whole globe is claimed to an accuracy of a fraction of a degree. The figures for the whole globe going back centuries & even hundreds of thousands of years are even more suspect. If there is uncertainty about cooling a few hundred years ago, how can we be confident about the older periods? There will be many adjustments as more information comes to light.
I will cease putting you in the same catagory as the poster who obviously has no peer in his own mind.
The real problem is in the arrogant certainty on the part of those who notice climactic change.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisClimatology is an infant science that is all hypotheses and pretty much zero actual science when it comes to proven understanding of the "why" behind the "what" that is observed.
There is a massive and truly bizarre hubris on the part of those who pretend they not only "absolutely know" the mechanisms behond the changes noted.
What is even more truly insane is that they also would have us believe they can control not just "the weather" but the climate as well.
What we see is the perversion of science to obey the political whims of the "scientists" who hold the 'usual views' to be found among the social and intellectual isolates in the edu-dustrial complex.
A parallel can be found in the era when the Lamarckian version of evolution found favor under the rule of Stalin and the communists in the Soviet Union.
It was pleasing to their political conceits to imagine that science backed up their preferences.
The real problem is in the arrogant certainty on the part of those who notice climactic change.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisClimatology is an infant science that is all hypotheses and pretty much zero actual science when it comes to proven understanding of the "why" behind the "what" that is observed.
There is a massive and truly bizarre hubris on the part of those who pretend they not only "absolutely know" the mechanisms behind the changes noted but also know how to manipulate climate with simplisitic "All you gotta do is...." solutions
What is even more truly insane is that they also would have us believe they can control not just this week's weather but the entire world climate as well.
What we see is the perversion of science to obey the political whims of the "scientists" who hold the 'usual views' to be found among the social and intellectual isolates in the edu-dustrial complex.
A parallel can be found in the era when the Lamarckian version of evolution found favor under the rule of Stalin and the communists in the Soviet Union.
It was pleasing to their political conceits to imagine that science backed up their preferences.
"There is a massive and truly bizarre hubris on the part of those who pretend they not only "absolutely know" the mechanisms behond [sic] the changes noted."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo how do you "absolutely know" that climate science is suspect and that we shouldn't trust its predictions? It's hard to tell because you present ZERO facts to back up your argument.
"What is even more truly insane is that they also would have us believe they can control not just "the weather" but the climate as well."
NOBODY is saying this. Where do you get this nonsense? I mean, it must be from the propaganda generated by the Heartland Institute via funding from fossil fuel companies as highlighted in the article. What don't you understand, that CO2 traps heat or that we're causing it to build up in the atmosphere? Simple physics...
The rest of your rant is a political screed driven no doubt by the corporate mouthpieces on Faux News/ right-wing radio and the denialist blogs. Did you een read this story? These folks are LYING TO YOU and the fossil fuel companies like Koch Industries and other are PAYING THEM TO DO IT!
Wow. . . I am always amazed that people such as you are so eager to advertize your ignorance.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA marvelously crafted message. The strength of your assumption relies very credibly upon climatology as a pseudoscience, the arrogance on the part of scientists, references to Stalin and Communism, and the assumption that there exists a belief that climate and weather can be controlled. Nothing short of highly logical, I guess in your world.
Ironically, you used the term "bizarre" in describing any viewpoint counter to what you have vomitted out here.
I usually get a chuckle when quotation marks are used around the word "scientists". You already know where the author is going.
Sorry, should be "their" ignorance.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is pretty clear you don't know much about the scientific method... nor about logic.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is why one ought to use the quotation marks around the word "scientists" at times... to note how questionable is the designation.
We might also use the term "scientists" when we speak about those who pretend to use science in the support of Creationism... which is also a bizarre effort to twist science into proving a philosophy.
It would seem "moss boss" that you are nearly clueless as to the content of the climate debate and how politically infected the debate has become.
Or do you just feign ignorance as a tactic?
It is rather comical to see this Xeroxed rant posted.... this kind of empty accusative screed.. based in little more than oft-repeated and ill-informed ravings... is often to be heard in the coffee-klatches of the intellectually isolated.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWere people to actually internalize a bit of the scientific method... instead of adhering to dogmatic pronouncements both old and new....they would realize how pure out crazy and unscientific it is to claim absolute knowledge has been discovered in climate studies.
That there has been climate change is in little dispute... however. .the pure unassailable fact of the matter is the climatologists are indulging in the veriest of speculative efforts when it comes to explaining the observations.
They are entirely too mired in personal quasi-religious political dogma too much of the time.
They are too, too, too sure they know the answers before they even look... and their efforts are tainted in a huge way by foregone conclusions.
Just as a minor aside.. it is forever amusing to see the lame efforts on the part of pseudo-intellectuals to point out typos as if they were some item of major importance.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt pretty much always is the tactic of someone who simply cannot defend their views in any rational manner... and who is therefore reduced to side-issue trivia that tends more to demonstrate how lost they are in insignificant trivia than able to understand actual 'large' ideas.
It is truly funny as well as maddening to see true-believers rave on as if climatology was a mature body of knowledge like, say, geology or mathematics.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow little of the subject they must understand.. .and how little they must know of its history.
Climatology in its present form is about 30-50 years old.. if that as the tools to even know what the past climate might have been did not exist before then.
It is hardly a novel idea to know the absolute fact that even weather predictions of any real depth are less than a century old... it was around WWII that some measure of weather predictability came light... and in all reality, that was primitive and remained so until the advent of both satellite recon and computers powerful enough to model fluid dynamics.
And so we can pretty much both laugh and lament over the silly clods who know so little of how little we know of even mere weather, let alone climate.
Laugh because they are smugly certain fools, likely to be possessors of Deeds To Mars that they bought while unsuccessfully scouting for green-skinned hookers at Trekkie events... lament because they both vote and breed to the net detriment of all of humanity.
It is interesting that you reference mathematics and geology regarding the "debate". There is no debate, as the science of which you demean is non-debatable. I might also add oceanography to your grouping of mature bodies of knowledge, as the three (mathematics, geology, and oceanography) constitute the reasoning behind climate change. You see, as a construct of scientific understanding that has a deep history, climatology has roots that are well founded.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI also find it interesting that you propose, to an unidentified poster such as me, that I have no knowledge in the scientific method, when your rant includes such statements accusing scientists of being "entirely too mired in personal quasi-religious political dogma too much of the time". What on earth are you writing about?
Vendicar:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThank's for the address to the seminar you referenced. I used some info from it to refute a post on a different article.
BREAKING: Gleick Confesses
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPosted on February 20, 2012by Anthony Watts
As many of us had surmised, Peter Gleick of the Pacific Institute is the Heartland document leaker. He has issued this statement:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/20/breaking-gleick-confesses/#more-57113
New paper: A high-resolution surface mass balance map of Antarctica shows “no significant trend in the 1979–2010 ice sheet”
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLeif Svalgaard writes in to tell me of a significant new paper. While Gore, Hansen, Branson, and a gaggle of hangers on just finished a publicity stunt tour of Antarctica to tell us all how terrible the ice loss is there, the data says otherwise. No trend!
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/20/new-paper-a-high-resolution-surface-mass-balance-map-of-antarctica-shows-no-significant-trend-in-the-1979-2010-ice-sheet/
Old news, Carlyle. . . do you have similar findings about Greenland and the North Pole? Probably not. . More of the same regarding local climates vs. global trends.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCarlyle:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUsing your logic, I should rant about the abnormally warm winter we are experiencing up here in New England. . . But I don't.
Will you be withdrawing this scurrilous and obviously completely unverified article now or will you blame your error on CO2?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou claimed I misrepresented what was in the link you provided. Really?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo sum up the Borenstein article, it’s factually incorrect in places, and in others, it raises alarmism to ridiculous levels by dwelling on a meaningless statistic, the July SST anomaly of the White Sea.
SA has repeatedly blocked this post. I will try it without the second link refered to in your post #87
So, when I claimed we were still coming out of the last Ice Age, I was not entirely in error.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAn ice age, or more precisely, a glacial age, is a period of long-term reduction in the temperature of the Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental ice sheets, polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Within a long-term ice age, individual pulses of cold climate are termed "glacial periods" (or alternatively "glacials" or "glaciations" or colloquially as "ice age"), and intermittent warm periods are called "interglacials". Glaciologically, ice age implies the presence of extensive ice sheets in the northern and southern hemispheres.[1] By this definition, we are still in the ice age that began at the start of the Pleistocene epoch, because the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets still exist.[2]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/ice-age-fruit-regenerated-into-plant/story-e6frg6so-1226276685046
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFrozen Ice Age fruit grown into plant
IT WAS an Ice Age squirrel's treasure chamber, a burrow containing fruit and seeds that had been stuck in the Siberian permafrost for over 30,000 years.
Canadian researchers had earlier regenerated some significantly younger plants from seeds found in burrows.
As I understand it, it is still permafrost where these seeds were found. The climate must have been warmer in that area & in Canada at the time this vegetation became frozen.
I have not been able to correlate such warm periods with the graphs on glaciation.
If you are ignorant to the fact that warmer air can hold more humidity, causing more snowfall in Antarctica, then you should stop commenting on climate issues until you read up on the facts a little more. Antarctica IS the most arid continent on the planet, after all.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo what? Doesn't change the fact that fossil fuel companies are funnelling money to the Heartland Institute so it can "teach the controversy" to little kids, just like the Creationists try to do. Doesn't change the fact that this is EXACTLY how the tobacco companies did it years ago. They're not even being creative with their corporate smear campaigns anymore!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou are dedicated to facts & peer review. When it suits you.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Kool-Aid gang continues to drink the CAGW swill. Has nobody noticed that Peter Gleick broke the law? Does no one care that he lied about not being the author of the phony memo he inserted into the relese? Look at his Youtube video; it contains the same slander and libel that the phoney memo contains. Gleick is NOT a hero, he's a bum. A bum who claims the Heartland Institute's educational material is anti-science when the material hasn't even been written yet! He seems to be running in fear of being contradicted.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWake up, people. This is not science, it's raw politics. Can we get back to discussing science?
While it's understandable that the Heartland Institute's misinformation campaign has been funded by the likes of Exxon/Mobil, Koch Industries, Philip Morris, Microsoft and Eli Lilly, the anonymous donor who has given $13 million to the Institute over the past five years to fund the 'climate change education project' is certainly interesting.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's not surprising in the least that the group funds vocal climate skeptics, like Craig Idso, Fred Singer, Robert Carter, and Anthony Watts, but this 'climate change education project' proposed by a philosopher focused on analyzing the nature of knowledge and how it relates to connected notions such as truth, belief, and justification, sounds more like teaching kids nothing but a conservative ideology instead of the science of paleoclimatology.
What next?
"Wake up, people. This is not science, it's raw politics."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this--------
That's exactly what I'd call this 'climate change education project' proposed by a philosopher focused on analyzing the nature of knowledge and how it relates to connected notions such as truth, belief, and justification -- ULTRA-CONSERVATIVE POLITICS!
Utter garbage. Notice that the common thread in these Pro-Glieck supporting rats is that it is somehow a right wing conspiracy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSkeptics are neither right nor left wing. We just want answers to questions raised. It is the breathless, thoughtless, ideologically driven AGW movement that attempts to paint anyone who disagrees with them as being opposed to their politics.
PHDgeologist is absolutely correct; there is nothing scientific about the AGW movement. It is a political movement and misuses and abuses science for its own ends.
Glieck, Mann, Hansen, Gore and on and on... political figures all. Some still donning the skins of scientists when it suits them, but all have lost their way.
"Utter garbage. Notice that the common thread in these Pro-Glieck supporting rats.."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this--------
Sorry bubba, but I NEVER said one word about supporting anyone, much less Gleick for being unethical. I just have a problem with BIG OIL and Koch Brother's MONEY funding a political science agenda by Heartland, and their 'climate change education project' proposed by a philosopher in order to teach kids about our "climate".
Sorry, but I stick with my original thought, that analyzing the nature of knowledge and how it relates to connected notions such as truth, belief, and justification, sounds more like teaching kids nothing but a conservative ideology instead of the science of paleoclimatology. It's been common knowledge for years that the Heartland Institute is a political organization that has been attacking science and scientists in order to poison the debate over climate change policy. They should have had their tax free exemption pulled a very long time ago.
Any plan to create a fossil-fuel-friendly curriculum for Kindergartners, especially by a philosopher focused on analyzing the nature of knowledge and how it relates to connected notions such as truth, belief, and justification, has no business in any school -- especially when it's funded by Koch Industries with a definite conservative political agenda!
What is required is to confront climate change deniers in court in front of a judge. Let them prove their opinions using hard evidence. And let the court be that of the Hague to prevent republicans from twisting the arms of supreme court judges....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBe careful what you wish for. The burden of proof is on the AGW tin hatters, not the Realists.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't think you really want to go there.
I've always wondered if it was too late to reverse this. I guess at this point all we can possibly hope for is a soft landing huh?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI just wonder how bad could it actually get if we continue business as usual for the rest of the century.
Carlyle, Nuclear energy is NOT clean. The waste takes a ridiculous number of years to decay to something safer. Storing the waste is a monumental task and the "safety" of those storage sites is highly questionable even in the short term. Nuclear fission is not a sustainable energy source, at least not at this time. I suspect you know this.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"We relvolve around the sun because we actually do, not because there is a consensus."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUntil Copernicus came along, people like "null" would have said: "The sun revolves around the earth because it actually does, not because there is a consensus"
And - sorry this might destroy your worldview - current scientific consensus (current= the last 100 years) is that both earth and sun revolve around their common center of mass. But you can still disregard the scientific consensus and believe in what you consider "actually" happening.
For those of us who believe in the scientific method (and this admittedly is a question of belief) scientific consensus often determines what we consider to be rather certain or uncertain.
For those that don't believe in the scientific method, I recommend taking a class on epistemology.