Education environment: denialists Heartland Institute Peter Gleick
by Warren
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Year 3, Month 3, Day 17: I Like Gleick
More on Gleick, this time reprinted from the WaPo in a suburban Chicago paper, the Daily Herald:
Everybody talks about the weather, as Mark Twain is famously quoted as saying, but nobody does anything about it.Many climate researchers are no longer following that adage, noted Michael McPhaden, president of the American Geophysical Union. “Scientists today, they don’t just want to talk about it. They want to do something about it,” he said in an interview. “We’re the trustees of information which, in many ways, is of critical benefit to society.”
Some researchers are taking on a greater advocacy role to confront what many of them consider an existential crisis. But this strategy carries inherent risks, since scientists’ influence stems from the public perception that their credibility is beyond reproach.
That’s why many in the scientific community recoiled when Peter Gleick, a respected hydrologist, admitted he had tricked the Heartland Institute, a free-market think tank that questions whether human activity contributes to global warming. “Integrity is the source of every power and influence we have as scientists,” said Peter Frumhoff, director of science and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “We don’t have the power to make laws, or run the economy.”
Thanks to DK diarist jamess, whose piece gave me the frame for this letter, sent March 11:
Given Heartland Institute’s previous disregard for the privacy of other people’s communications, it should be surprising to hear their howls of outrage after their defenses were penetrated and their internal documents released to the public. It was just two years ago that Heartland published illegally-obtained emails from the University of East Anglia — setting off “Climategate,” a non-scandal that occupied media attention and confused public discussion before being resolved and forgotten.
Let’s compare “Denialgate” with “Climategate,” shall we? First: while the hacker who stole the East Anglia documents has never come forward, we know who got Heartland’s documents: Peter Gleick (who’s paying a significant professional penalty for his deed). Second: multiple independent investigations confirmed the innocence and the integrity of the UEA climatologists… but to believe that any such study of Heartland’s work on climate change would similarly vindicate either their science or their ethics would be breathtakingly naive.
Warren Senders
Education environment: denialists extreme weather idiots
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Year 3, Month 3, Day 12: And In Related News…
This letter was prompted by the comments on this article in the (upstate NY) TImes-Herald-Record:
A new report by an environmental advocacy group shows our region has been particularly vulnerable to extreme weather events — driven by what it believes is climate change.
The report, compiled by Environment New York Research and Policy Center, shows our nook of the Northeast has had a high number of federal disaster declarations since 2006.
Numbers from the Federal Emergency Management Agency show Ulster County has had six weather-related federal disaster declarations in the last five years, while Orange County has had five and Sullivan County, four.
Related Stories“Catskill, Hudson Valley, and Mohawk River Valley residents have endured extreme weather beyond the usual cold winters during the last five years,” David VanLuven, director of the Center, said in a statement.
Our region stands out for the amount of federal disaster declarations in the past five years.
I figured I’d write a guide for wanna-be “skeptics.” Sent March 6:
Here’s how to simulate a climate-change denialist’s response to the report linking New York state’s increasingly extreme weather to global warming.
First, assert that the climate has always changed over time, so why worry? Second, note that since the report was sponsored by an environmental group its contents are necessarily suspect. Third, point out that scientists predicted global cooling in the 1970s, so why should their opinions be trusted now? Fourth, claim that the hacked emails from the University of East Anglia show climatologists can’t be trusted. Fifth, raise the specter of a socialist New World Order apparently operated for the enrichment of dastardly tree-huggers. And last but not least, make fun of Al Gore.
Leaving aside the last two absurdities, each of these arguments is simply rebutted. Multiple inquiries absolved the “climategate” scientists from any wrongdoing while confirming their results; a substantial majority of climatologists were in fact predicting global warming in the 1970s; most reports on the environment come from environmental groups (surprise!). Finally, nobody suggests Earth’s climate has never changed — just that if climatic shifts that historically lasted a hundred thousand years are now taking a hundred, that’s not a good sign.
It’s easy.
Warren Senders
Education environment Politics: denialists scientific consensus
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Year 3, Month 3, Day 7: Don’t Criticize Our Coffee; You May Be Old, Weak and Bitter Yourself Some Day.
I knew all that weird-ass weather was good for something. More on the “Everybody’s getting a clue” story, from the L.A. Times:
After several years of finding that fewer and fewer Americans believed in man-made climate change, pollsters are now finding that belief is on the uptick.
The newest study from the National Survey of American Public Opinion on Climate Change, which is a biannual survey taken since fall 2008 and organized by the Brookings Institute, shows that 62% of Americans now believe that man-made climate change is occurring, and 26% do not. The others are unsure.
That is a significant rise in believers since a low in spring 2010, when only about 50% of Americans said they believed in global warming, but still down from when the survey first began, when it was at around 75%. The pollsters talked to 887 people across the country.
What’s caused the sudden rise? Mostly the weather.
“People, for good or for bad, are making connections in what they see in terms of weather and what they believe in terms of climate change,” said Christopher Borick, co-author of the survey. He is an associate professor of Political Science and director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion in Pennsylvania. His co-author is Barry Rabe, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute and a professor at the University of Michigan.
So I wrote this and sent it on March 1:
Learning that more Americans accept the scientific factuality of global climate change is a problematic sort of good news — like watching a cherished friend start to realize that the warnings he’s receiving from his cardiologist are genuine.
Of course, recognizing the seriousness of a problem is a long way from actually doing something about it. Your old friend may have gotten a medical alert, but he’s still smoking two packs a day. Similarly, while Americans are waking up to the dangers of climate change, we’re a long way from changing the way we live.
Because our modern economy developed when energy was “cheap,” it was easier to consume than to conserve. Now that the true cost of all that fossil fuel is emerging, it’s clear that protecting ourselves from the consequences of a runaway greenhouse effect is going to be expensive and inconvenient. Unless we consider the alternative.
Warren Senders
atheism Education environment Politics: belief systems media irresponsibility scientific consensus
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Year 3, Month 3, Day 6: Still I Look To Find A Reason…
According to a number of news reports, more Americans have stopped whacking the snooze button, as witness this, from the San Diego Union-Tribune:
The percentage of Americans who believe in global warming has rebounded to the highest level since the fall of 2009, according to a University of Michigan survey released Tuesday.
When the initial poll was done in the 2008, 72 percent of Americans said they believed there was solid evidence that average temperatures on Earth have been getting warmer over the past four decades.
The number fell to 65 percent in the fall of 2009 and tumbled to 58 percent a year later. But the most recent survey shows that in the fall of 2011, the number of climate-change believers rebounded to 62 percent.
A day earlier, the San Diego Regional Climate Education Partnership issued its own countywide survey on the same topic. It showed that the majority of San Diegans believe that:
• Gasoline engines and electricity generation emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere (68 percent).
• Rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a major cause of increased temperatures (54 percent).
• Worldwide annual temperatures between 1990 and 2010 have been the warmest in recorded history (55 percent).
The highest degree of specific concern (71 percent) was expressed for “future generations,” followed by “children” (69 percent) and “humanity” in general (65 percent) — what survey sponsors said indicated a strong connection between climate change impacts and people.
Good. I was getting bored with bashing Heartland Institute. Sent February 29:
Scientifically literate citizens are delighted to hear that more Americans are beginning to accept the ominous reality of global climate change. After all, you can’t fix a problem until you recognize that it exists. So a survey showing that almost two-thirds of Americans “believe in global warming” is good news — of a sort.
But before we break out the champagne, we should recognize that the greenhouse effect isn’t a philosophy, a theology, a credo, or a moral code; it’s as real as gravity — confirmed by experiment, observation and measurement — not something we can choose to “believe in” or not, but a fact. Extra CO2 in our atmosphere causes the greenhouse effect, which causes global warming, which in turn causes climate change. When politicians, pundits, and pollsters claim that science, like religion, is a matter of “belief,” it’s no surprise that public discussion of climate change has been so muddled and confused.
Warren Senders
Education environment Politics: assholes denialists Heartland Institute idiots quacks
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Year 3, Month 3, Day 4: Goat Glands!
The Philadelphia Inquirer speaks sooth:
Recent revelations are highlighting the corrosive nature of our national dialogue about climate change.
Bloggers recently published what appear to be internal documents from the Heartland Institute, a group that has long sought to undermine public understanding of climate science. The documents detail the organization’s plan to introduce misleading information about climate change to science classrooms as part of a larger campaign to constrain the American response to the problem. And last week, a highly regarded climate scientist revealed that his frustration over continuing attacks on climate science led him to trick Heartland into sending him its documents.
Sadly, stolen documents and e-mails, opaque corporate financing of interest groups, and a simple lack of civility have come to define the public discourse on climate change.
There is a better way.
The truth is that the scientific community has reached a consensus on climate change. The buildup of heat-trapping emissions from burning fossil fuels and clearing forests is changing the climate, posing significant risks to our well-being. Reducing emissions and preparing for unavoidable changes would greatly reduce those risks. That is the conclusion of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the world’s leading scientific societies, and the overwhelming majority of practicing climate scientists.
I’ve just been reading Pope Brock’s book on John Brinkley. Go ahead, read about him; I’ll wait. Sent February 27:
While fleecing the rubes is a long-standing American tradition, there’s a big difference between the Heartland Institute and old-fashioned con artists like “Doctor” John Brinkley, who crippled thousands and made millions selling “rejuvenation” treatments to the gullible and needy in the 1920s. Brinkley and others of his ilk peddled nostrums they knew to be spurious, and countless anxious individuals believed their lies.
While Heartland’s agenda is not so much about selling lies as it is about devaluing the truth, the charlatans and quacks who sold snake oil and goat glands would feel right at home with the Institute’s science-denying curriculum salesmen. Funded by corporate interests whose astronomical profit margins are threatened by any sort of regulatory action on climate change, this secretive conservative think tank distorts and denies the overwhelming scientific consensus on global warming, fostering public confusion and ignorance. And all for the basest of motives: money.
Warren Senders
Education environment: denialists Heartland Institute idiots Peter Gleick
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Year 3, Month 3, Day 2: One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other
The Hudson Valley Media Group runs a piece from the Saint Louis Post-Dispatch with the title, “Heartland Institute: Not a think tank, just in the tank.”
Oh, my, yes:
The purported Heartland Institute internal documents leaked to media outlets last week were not exactly revelatory.
Collectively, the 100 or so pages describe an advocacy group going about the business of pushing its agenda and raising money to help it do so. Chicago-based Heartland has been doing that since it was created in 1984 “to discover, develop and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems,” according to its current mission statement.
Still, the leak and Heartland’s response to it are useful reminders to anyone seeking hard information about controversial issues: Words such as “institute,” “center” and “council” in an organization’s name do not necessarily signal impartial inquiry or dispassionate investigation. Any organization can call itself a “think tank,” but sometimes spin is just spin.
When the documents first appeared on the Internet last week, Heartland quickly confirmed that some of its materials had been “stolen.” On Wednesday, Heartland declared one two-page memo to be an outright fake but said the rest of the material had not yet been reviewed to see if anything had been altered.
By Thursday, Heartland chief executive Joseph Bast wrote in a blog post that the organization still didn’t know if any documents had been modified. And in a letter sent Saturday to some Internet sites that had posted the documents, Heartland’s general counsel said the group still was investigating whether the documents had been altered.
Authenticating the documents isn’t that difficult. Heartland created and possesses the originals, after all. If it could discredit them, it would.
The first comment triggered this letter, which was sent off on February 25:
When confronted with Heartland Institute’s plans to disseminate climate-science denialist curricula, conservatives quickly invoke the “climategate” emails. The disagreements over statistical methods between scientists at the University of East Anglia are somehow equated to a heavily funded anti-science program affecting public schools nationwide, presumably because both involved documents obtained outside normal channels.
Well, no.
Three separate independent inquiries completely exonerated the UEA scientists, and other climatologists all over the world support their conclusions. The hackers who obtained the “climategate” emails have never revealed themselves, let alone apologized.
Conversely, the Heartland Institute’s climate-change denial curricula are produced by someone with no training in the field. While Heartland’s position is disputed by the overwhelming majority of climate scientists, their work is supported by corporations hoping to protect their profitability by delaying environmental regulation. The lone individual who obtained the Heartland documents almost immediately identified himself.
The two cases are emphatically not equivalent.
Warren Senders
Education environment Politics: assholes corporate irresponsibility denialists Heartland Institute Peter Gleick
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Year 3, Month 3, Day 1: Remixed.
The Silicon Valley Mercury-News, on Gleick:
For the past two decades, Peter Gleick has earned a reputation as a nationally known expert on water and climate issues, winning a MacArthur “genius award,” penning a long list of scientific articles and testifying before Congress.
But over the past two days, the 55-year-old Berkeley resident has found himself at the center of a national maelstrom of his own making: using a false name to obtain confidential documents from a pro-industry think tank known for minimizing the risks of global warming.
The issue has riveted the environmental community and the energy industry, raising questions about whether the damage will extend past Gleick’s reputation and harm scientists’ efforts to convince the public that climate change is real and largely caused by humans.
Gleick, president of the nonprofit Pacific Institute, in Oakland, wasn’t talking Tuesday.
But Monday, he stunned the scientific community when he admitted — via his blog in the Huffington Post — that he obtained confidential fundraising and strategy documents from the libertarian Heartland Institute in Chicago by using someone else’s name, and distributed them on the Internet.
Heartland/Gleick — the gift that keeps on giving. Sent February 24 (putting me six days ahead of the game):
Yes, Dr. Peter Gleick was naughty. Misrepresenting himself to the Heartland Institute in order to verify the provenance of some documents was indeed an ethical lapse — but when measured against the wholesale mendacity of Heartland’s climate-change denialist curricula, Gleick’s offense is about as serious as a parking ticket.
But unlike Gleick, Heartland Institute didn’t have an “ethical lapse.” You can’t lose what you don’t have, and all the evidence suggests that this secretive right-wing think tank never had any ethics in the first place.
Misrepresenting the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change is bad enough when it’s done in politics and the media, for it fosters inaction in the face of a serious (and steadily worsening) global threat. But misrepresenting climate science in our nation’s classrooms is a form of intellectual child abuse; a gross violation of the public trust; a lie so big it beggars the imagination.
Warren Senders
Education environment: assholes corporate irresponsibility denialists Heartland Institute Peter Gleick scientific consensus
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Year 3, Month 2, Day 29: Let’s Play “Let’s Pretend!”
The Toronto Star addresses the Heartland scandal:
Is Peter Gleick a heroic whistleblower or a climate scientist in disgrace?
Gleick, president of the California-based Pacific Institute, placed himself in the middle of controversy this week after admitting he had assumed a false identity to verify the authenticity of documents he says he received anonymously through the mail.
The documents in question reportedly came from within the Heartland Institute, a right-wing, libertarian U.S. think tank that disputes the consensus scientific view of climate change: that the planet is warming and human activity is the primary cause.
Critics say Heartland, under the guise of serious debate, has put great effort into planting doubt and sewing confusion around climate science, with the intention of delaying or halting government action aimed at reining in greenhouse-gas emissions.
The package of documents Gleick obtained backed up such criticisms. “It contained information about their funders and the Institute’s apparent efforts to muddy public understanding about climate science and policy,” he wrote this week in a Huffington Post commentary.
Here we go again. Notice the absence of Thomas Jefferson! Sent February 24:
To save time, let’s all agree that in a perfect world, Dr. Peter Gleick would not have misrepresented himself to the Heartland Institute’s office staff as a way of obtaining their proprietary documents. Shame, shame! But in a perfect world, the Heartland Institute would not be misrepresenting climate science to the public. Shame, shame, shame, shame!
On the one hand, a single scientist of impeccable reputation; on the other, a secretive right-wing think tank with a multi-million-dollar budget. On the one hand, the scientific facts of the greenhouse effect and its catastrophic consequences; on the other, a program of climate-change denialism masquerading as a neutral “teach the controversy” curriculum. On the one hand, an overwhelming scientific consensus; on the other, David Wojik, an epistemologist who is being well paid to foster confusion and uncertainty.
Has Dr. Gleick’s fib helped the truth emerge? He has nothing to be ashamed of.
Warren Senders
Education environment: assholes corporate irresponsibility denialists Heartland Institute idiots Peter Gleick scientific method
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Year 3, Month 2, Day 28: You Know You Know
More pearl-clutching over the fib heard round the world, this time from the San Francisco Chronicle:
The latest national uproar over climate change science has damaged, if not ruined, the reputation of one of the Bay Area’s most prominent scholars and raised serious questions about ethics during what has become a roiling political and ideological debate.
Peter Gleick, a MacArthur Foundation fellow and co-founder and president of Oakland’s Pacific Institute, admitted Monday that he had posed as someone else and obtained confidential internal papers from the Heartland Institute, a libertarian group that has questioned the reality of human-caused global warming.
I used yesterday’s letter to the WaPo as a model. Sent February 22:
Let’s all shed a few tears in sympathy for Heartland Institute. Massively subsidized by some of the world’s most powerful corporations, these industrial-scale liars have finally been exposed as, well, liars. Who wouldn’t cry victimhood under such circumstances? And who cares that Heartland’s massive misrepresentations of scientific fact have been a core component of conservative obduracy on addressing climate change? It’s more fun to pillory climatologist Peter Gleick, who used a single strategically-targeted misrepresentation to expose Heartland’s mendacity.
Heartland’s plans to teach climate-change denial in our nation’s schools are profoundly unpatriotic. Remember Thomas Jefferson’s vision of a “well-informed citizenry,” and ask yourself: would the Sage of Monticello (a man who loved scientific truth as much as he loved his country) be outraged by Peter Gleick’s fib, or by the institutionalized anti-science pseudo-education that prompted it?
Warren Senders
Education environment: denialists Heartland Institute science
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The mouths of babes…
…watch this: