Feb 24, 2012
The Skeptic’s Case
By David Evans
We check the main predictions of the climate models against the best and latest data. Fortunately the climate models got all their major predictions wrong. Why? Every serious skeptical scientist has been consistently saying essentially the same thing for over 20 years, yet most people have never heard the message. Here it is, put simply enough for any lay reader willing to pay attention.
What the Government Climate Scientists Say
The climate models. If the CO2 level doubles (as it is on course to do by about 2070 to 2100), the climate models estimate the temperature increase due to that extra CO2 will be about 1.1C × 3 = 3.3C.[1]
The direct effect of CO2 is well-established physics, based on laboratory results, and known for over a century.[2]
Feedbacks are due to the ways the Earth reacts to the direct warming effect of the CO2. The threefold amplification by feedbacks is based on the assumption, or guess, made around 1980, that more warming due to CO2 will cause more evaporation from the oceans and that this extra water vapor will in turn lead to even more heat trapping because water vapor is the main greenhouse gas. And extra heat will cause even more evaporation, and so on. This amplification is built into all the climate models.[3] The amount of amplification is estimated by assuming that nearly all the industrial-age warming is due to our CO2.
The government climate scientists and the media often tell us about the direct effect of the CO2, but rarely admit that two-thirds of their projected temperature increases are due to amplification by feedbacks.
What the Skeptics Say
Figure 2
The skeptic’s view. If the CO2 level doubles, skeptics estimates that the temperature increase due to that extra CO2 will be about 1.1C × 0.5 ≈ 0.6C.[4]
The serious skeptical scientists have always agreed with the government climate scientists about the direct effect of CO2. The argument is entirely about the feedbacks.
The feedbacks dampen or reduce the direct effect of the extra CO2, cutting it roughly in half.[5] The main feedbacks involve evaporation, water vapor, and clouds. In particular, water vapor condenses into clouds, so extra water vapor due to the direct warming effect of extra CO2 will cause extra clouds, which reflect sunlight back out to space and cool the earth, thereby reducing the overall warming.
There are literally thousands of feedbacks, each of which either reinforces or opposes the direct-warming effect of the extra CO2. Almost every long-lived system is governed by net feedback that dampens its response to a perturbation. If a system instead reacts to a perturbation by amplifying it, the system is likely to reach a tipping point and become unstable (like the electronic squeal that erupts when a microphone gets too close to its speakers). The earth’s climate is long-lived and stable - it has never gone into runaway greenhouse, unlike Venus - which strongly suggests that the feedbacks dampen temperature perturbations such as that from extra CO2.
What the Data Says
The climate models have been essentially the same for 30 years now, maintaining roughly the same sensitivity to extra CO2 even while they got more detailed with more computer power.
· How well have the climate models predicted the temperature?
· Does the data better support the climate models or the skeptic’s view?
Air Temperatures
One of the earliest and most important predictions was presented to the US Congress in 1988 by Dr James Hansen, the “father of global warming”:
Figure 3. Hansen’s predictions to the US Congress in 1988,[6] compared to the subsequent temperatures as measured by NASA satellites.[7]
Hansen’s climate model clearly exaggerated future temperature rises.
In particular, his climate model predicted that if human CO2 emissions were cut back drastically starting in 1988, such that by year 2000 the CO2 level was not rising at all, we would get his scenario C. But in reality the temperature did not even rise this much, even though our CO2 emissions strongly increased — which suggests that the climate models greatly overestimate the effect of CO2 emissions.
A more considered prediction by the climate models was made in 1990 in the IPCC’s First Assessment Report:[8]
Figure 4 Predictions of the IPCC’s First Assessment Report in 1990, compared to the subsequent temperatures as measured by NASA satellites.
It’s 20 years now, and the average rate of increase in reality is below the lowest trend in the range predicted by the IPCC.
Ocean Temperatures
The oceans hold the vast bulk of the heat in the climate system. We’ve only been measuring ocean temperature properly since mid-2003, when the Argo system became operational.[9][10] In Argo, a buoy duck dives down to a depth of 2,000 meters, measures temperatures as it very slowly ascends, then radios the results back to headquarters via satellite. Over 3,000 Argo buoys constantly patrol all the oceans of the world.
Figure 5. Climate model predictions of ocean temperature,[11] versus the measurements by Argo.[12] The unit of the vertical axis is 10^22 Joules (about 0.01C).
The ocean temperature has been basically flat since we started measuring it properly, and not warming as quickly as the climate models predict.
Atmospheric Hotspot
The climate models predict a particular pattern of atmospheric warming during periods of global warming; the most prominent change they predict is a warming in the tropics about 10 km up, the “hotspot.”
The hotspot is the sign of the amplification in their theory (see figure 1). The theory says the hotspot is caused by extra evaporation, and by extra water vapor pushing the warmer, wetter lower troposphere up into volume previously occupied by cool dry air. The presence of a hotspot would indicate amplification is occurring, and vice versa.
We have been measuring atmospheric temperatures with weather balloons since the 1960s. Millions of weather balloons have built up a good picture of atmospheric temperatures over the last few decades, including the warming period from the late 1970s to the late ‘90s. This important and pivotal data was not released publicly by the climate establishment until 2006, and then in an obscure place.[13] Here it is:
Figure 6. On the left is the data collected by millions of weather balloons.[14] On the right is what the climate models say was happening.[15] The theory (as per the climate models) is incompatible with the observations. In both diagrams the horizontal axis shows latitude, and the right vertical axis shows height in kilometers.
In reality there was no hotspot, not even a small one. So in reality there is no amplification - the amplification shown in figure 1 does not exist.[16]
Outgoing Radiation
The climate models predict that when the surface of the earth warms, less heat is radiated from the earth into space (on a weekly or monthly time scale). This is because, according to the theory, the warmer surface causes more evaporation and thus there is more heat-trapping water vapor. This is the heat-trapping mechanism that is responsible for the assumed amplification in figure 1.
Satellites have been measuring the radiation emitted from the earth for the last two decades. A major study has linked the changes in temperature on the earth’s surface with the changes in the outgoing radiation. Here are the results:
Outgoing radiation from earth (vertical axis) against sea-surface temperature (horizontal), as measured by the ERBE satellites (upper-left graph) and as “predicted” by 11 climate models (the other graphs).[17] Notice that the slopes of the graphs for the climate models are opposite to the slope of the graph for the observed data.
This shows that in reality the earth gives off more heat when its surface is warmer. This is the opposite of what the climate models predict. This shows that the climate models trap heat too aggressively, and that their assumed amplification shown in figure 1 does not exist.
Conclusions
All the data here is impeccably sourced - satellites, Argo, and weather balloons.[18]
The air and ocean temperature data shows that the climate models overestimate temperature rises. The climate establishment suggest that cooling due to undetected aerosols might be responsible for the failure of the models to date, but this excuse is wearing thin - it continues not to warm as much as they said it would, or in the way they said it would. On the other hand, the rise in air temperature has been greater than the skeptics say could be due to CO2. The skeptic’s excuse is that the rise is mainly due to other forces - and they point out that the world has been in a fairly steady warming trend of 0.5C per century since 1680 (with alternating ~30 year periods of warming and mild cooling) where as the vast bulk of all human CO2 emissions have been after 1945.
We’ve checked all the main predictions of the climate models against the best data:
Test
Climate Models
Air temperatures from 1988:
Overestimated rise, even if CO2 is drastically cut
Air temperatures from 1990
Overestimated trend rise
Ocean temperatures from 2003
Overestimated trend rise greatly
Atmospheric hotspot
Completely missing → no amplification
Outgoing radiation
Opposite to reality → no amplification
The climate models get them all wrong. The missing hotspot and outgoing radiation data both, independently, prove that the amplification in the climate models is not present. Without the amplification, the climate model temperature predictions would be cut by at least two-thirds, which would explain why they overestimated the recent air and ocean temperature increases. Therefore,
* The climate models are fundamentally flawed. Their assumed threefold amplification by feedbacks does not in fact exist.
* The climate models overestimate temperature rises due to CO2 by at least a factor of three.
* The skeptical view is compatible with the data.
Some Political Points
The data presented here is impeccably sourced, very relevant, publicly available, and from our best instruments. Yet it never appears in the mainstream media — have you ever seen anything like any of the figures here in the mainstream media? That alone tells you that the “debate” is about politics and power, and not about science or truth.
This is an unusual political issue, because there is a right and a wrong answer, and everyone will know which it is eventually. People are going ahead and emitting CO2 anyway, so we are doing the experiment: either the world heats up by several degrees by 2050 or so, or it doesn’t.
Notice that the skeptics agree with the government climate scientists about the direct effect of CO2; they just disagree about the feedbacks. The climate debate is all about the feedbacks; everything else is merely a sideshow. Yet hardly anyone knows that. The government climate scientists and the mainstream media have framed the debate in terms of the direct effect of CO2 and sideshows such as arctic ice, bad weather, or psychology. They almost never mention the feedbacks. Why is that? Who has the power to make that happen?
Dr. David M.W. Evans consulted full time for the Australian Greenhouse Office (now the Department of Climate Change) from 1999 to 2005, and part time 2008 to 2010, modeling Australia’s carbon in plants, debris, mulch, soils, and forestry and agricultural products. Evans is a mathematician and engineer, with six university degrees including a PhD from Stanford University in electrical engineering. The area of human endeavor with the most experience and sophistication in dealing with feedbacks and analyzing complex systems is electrical engineering, and the most crucial and disputed aspects of understanding the climate system are the feedbacks. The evidence supporting the idea that CO2 emissions were the main cause of global warming reversed itself from 1998 to 2006, causing Evans to move from being a warmist to a skeptic.
Feb 22, 2012
Breaking: EPA scrubs grants database of Gleick grants
By Steve Milloy
Here’s the timeline:
■Yesterday at 11:41 am we reported that EPA has awarded Peter Glieck’s Pacific Institute $468,000 in grants.
■Later in the afternoon, the National Center for Public Policy Research issued a media release calling for Congressional hearings into the EPA grants to Gleick.
■Today, a JunkScience.com commenter Brian Carter reported that the links in our original post didn’t work.
■We confirmed Carter’s observation around 12:30pm today.
Fortunately, we saved a PDF file of one of the EPA grants to Gleick. So unless JunkScience.com gets Stalinized…
Click for:
■ The EPA web pages documenting the $25,000 grants.
■ EPA - Grant Awards Database - All Awards to Non-ProfitsA list of EPA’s grants to nonprofits that omits mention of Gleick’s Pacific Institute.
■ Click for a search of EPA’s Grants Database that returns no results for Pacific Institute.
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Fakegate Illustrates Global Warming Alarmists’ Deceit and Desperation
By James Taylor, Heartland Institute
There never was a “leaker” in the shameful Fakegate scandal. In the end, there was only a forger, a fraudster and a thief. Alarmist scientist Peter Gleick has admitted that the latter two were one and the same person - himself. I suspect we will soon learn the identity of the forger, as well.
With the weight of damning evidence closing in on him, Gleick has admitted in his Huffington Post blog that he was the alleged “Heartland Insider” who committed fraud and identity theft, lying and stealing his way into possession of Heartland Institute internal personnel documents and then sending those private documents to global warming activist groups and left-leaning media. Gleick sent to the press an additional document, a fake “2012 Climate Strategy,” that he claims he did not write.
In short, Gleick set up an email account designed to mimic the email account of a Heartland Institute board member. Gleick then sent an email from that account to a Heartland Institute staffer, in which Gleick explicitly claimed to be the Heartland Institute board member. Gleick asked the staffer to email him internal documents relating to a recent board meeting. Soon thereafter, Gleick, while claiming to be a “Heartland Insider,” sent those Heartland Institute documents plus the forged “2012 Climate Strategy” document to sympathetic media and global warming activists.
While the legitimate Heartland Institute documents revealed personal, confidential and private information about Heartland Institute personnel, donors and programs, there was nothing scandalous in the documents. The documents merely showed the inner workings of an influential public policy organization operating on a budget that was quite small compared to environmental activist groups such as Greenpeace, the Sierra Club and Environmental Defense. Indeed, the internal documents refuted the false, yet often repeated assertions that the Heartland Institute’s powerful climate realism message is largely funded by Big Oil, Big Coal or Big Whatever.
The only thing that would seem to undermine the Heartland Institute’s credibility was the wording of the fake “2012 Climate Strategy” document. Computer forensics experts quickly discovered the climate strategy document was created by a different computer program and at a different time than the legitimate documents. The climate strategy document was also written in much different language, style, format and font than the legitimate documents. And long before Gleick confessed to being the fraudster and thief at the heart of the stolen documents, analysts noted a striking similarity between the language and style of the forged document and the language and style of Gleick’s public writings.
The real story in this Fakegate scandal is how the global warming movement is desperate, delusional and collapsing as global warming fails to live up to alarmist predictions. People with sound science on their side do not need to forge documents to validate their arguments or make the other side look bad. Also, people who are so desperate as to forge documents in an attempt to frame their rivals are clearly not above forging scientific data, studies and facts to similarly further their cause.
It is both striking and telling how global warming activists have failed to condemn the acts of forgery in the Fakegate scandal. For global warming activists, the ends justify the means - any means necessary to sell their alarmist message, even if they must sink to forgery and fakery.
It is also worth noting that Gleick repeatedly claims in his confession that his misconduct was motivated by a desire to create a rational public debate on global warming and that he was trying to fight back against the people he claims are seeking to prevent such a debate. Yet in January 2012 the Heartland Institute cordially invited Gleick to publicly debate me at our 2012 annual benefit dinner. All Gleick would had to have done is defeat me in that debate and he could have accomplished his twin goals of promoting public debate and embarrassing the Heartland Institute. Yet Gleick declined to participate in such a fair and open debate, and then on the very next day committed his acts of fraud and theft against the Heartland Institute.
Beyond our invitation to Gleick, the Heartland Institute has cordially invited dozens of scientists who believe humans are creating a global warming crisis to give presentations and to debate skeptics at our annual global warming conferences. Only one such scientist has ever accepted our offer.
If Gleick is indeed concerned about people preventing a public debate on global warming, he perhaps should have targeted his global warming activist colleagues rather than the Heartland Institute.
Feb 21, 2012
Stolen Heartland Documents: DeSmog Blog Keeps Blowing Smoke
Marlo Lewis, Global Warming.org
“Climate scientist Peter Gleick has acknowledged that he was the person who convinced the Heartland Institute to hand over the contents of its January Board package, authenticating the documents beyond a doubt and further exposing the disinformation campaign Heartland has pursued in the last week, trying to discredit the information,” writes DeSmog Blog in a post titled “Whistleblower Authenticates Heartland Documents” (Feb. 20, 2012).
Gleick is indeed the culprit, but he is not a “whistleblower” because to be a candidate for that honorable title, he’d have to be a current or former employee. Gleick acknowledges that he, an outside critic of the organization, solicited and received Heartland documents under false pretenses, an action he describes as a “serious lapse of my own and professional judgment and ethics.”
More importantly, contrary to DeSmog’s spin, Gleick does not claim to authenticate the document titled “Confidential Memo: Heartland 2012 Climate Strategy,” the only document among those stolen and published that even vaguely resembles the stuff of scandal.
Even more pathetic is the sanctimonious open letter by Michael Mann and six colleagues who suggest that Heartland merely got its comeuppance for cheering and publicizing the release of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) emails that sparked the Climategate scandal.
As noted here last week, there is good reason to believe the climate strategy memo, which purports to be a confidential communication to a “subset of Institute Board and senior staff,” is a fake.
The memo says, “We will also pursue additional support from the Charles G. Koch Foundation. They returned as a Heartland donor in 2011 with a contribution of $200,000.” But one of the bona fide stolen board meeting documents, Heartland’s 2012 Fund Raising Plan (p. 22), shows that Koch donated $25,000 in 2011, not $200,000, and for Heartland’s health care program, not its climate science program. Heartland seeks a $200,000 donation from Koch in 2012 - for its health care program, not its climate program. In short, the alleged strategy memo gets basic information - how much Koch contributed and for which program activities - stunningly wrong. It is almost inconceivable that Heartland would have mailed to key board members and staff a document so egregiously inconsistent with the Institute’s 2012 Fund Raising Plan.
Megan McCardle of The Atlantic reported another reason to be suspicious of the strategy memo. Electronic analysis of the document indicates it was created by someone living in the Pacific time zone, unlike the other documents (aside from the IRS 1099 form), which were created in the Central time zone, where Heartland is headquartered. Just by the bye, Peter Gleick’s organization, the Pacific Institute, is located in the Pacific time zone.
Gleick says he received the strategy memo from an anonymous third party. Maybe, maybe not. In any case, contrary to DeSmog Blog’s editorializing in the guise of reporting, Gleick does not claim to have authenticated the strategy memo:
At the beginning of 2012, I received an anonymous document in the mail describing what appeared to be details of the Heartland Institute’s climate program strategy. It contained information about their funders and the Institute’s apparent efforts to muddy public understanding about climate science and policy. I do not know the source of that original document but assumed it was sent to me because of my past exchanges with Heartland and because I was named in it.
Given the potential impact however, I attempted to confirm the accuracy of the information in this document. In an effort to do so, and in a serious lapse of my own and professional judgment and ethics, I solicited and received additional materials directly from the Heartland Institute under someone else’s name. The materials the Heartland Institute sent to me confirmed many of the facts in the original document, including especially their 2012 fundraising strategy and budget. I forwarded, anonymously, the documents I had received to a set of journalists and experts working on climate issues. I can explicitly confirm, as can the Heartland Institute, that the documents they emailed to me are identical to the documents that have been made public. I made no changes or alterations of any kind to any of the Heartland Institute documents or to the original anonymous communication [emphasis added].
The materials Heartland sent Gleick ‘confirm many of the facts’ in the strategy memo because the memo is mostly a pastiche of phrases taken from other documents. But note, Gleick does not say that Heartland mailed him the strategy memo. He also implicitly acknowledges that not all the facts in the strategy memo are confirmed by the other documents. Indeed, as we have seen, the 2012 Fund Raising Plan conflicts with the strategy memo’s assertions regarding the amount and kind of Koch’s 2011 donation.
The only part of the strategy memo that comes even close to scandalous (unless you make the question-begging assumption - Gleick apparently does - that climate skeptics are a scandalous bunch) is the statement that “it is important to keep scientists like Gleick “out” of Forbes magazine. Spotlighting this statement, DeSmog Blog accused Heartland of hypocrisy, because the Institute had blasted CRU scientists for trying to keep skeptics out of the peer reviewed literature. But the statement in question is so silly it casts additional doubt on the strategy memo’s authenticity.
How on earth could Heartland keep opposing views out of Forbes? Is Heartland the think-tank tail that wags the financial-empire dog? The “confidential” memo implies that when Heartland President Joe Bast says “jump,” Steve Forbes says “How high?” Anyone credulous enough to believe that probably also believes global warming is a planetary emergency even though annual deaths and death rates related to extreme weather have declined by 93% and 98%, respectively, since the 1920s.
In an open letter published in the UK Guardian, seven scientists prominently identified with Climategate take a ‘people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones’ tone about the bogus Heartland scandal. They write:
So although we can agree that stealing documents and posting them online is not an acceptable practice, we would be remiss if we did not point out that the Heartland Institute has had no qualms about utilizing and distorting emails stolen from scientists.
The Climategate Seven compare apples to oranges - an old rhetorical trick that has no place in scientific discourse. Michael Mann and the CRU gang are funded by taxpayers. Consequently, their data, methodologies, and work-related email are subject to freedom of information laws. The Heartland Institute is a privately-funded organization. Consequently, its internal decision and planning documents are not subject to FOIA.
As we know from the Climategate emails, Phil Jones and CRU scientists stonewalled FOIA requests for years to prevent independent researchers from checking their data and methodologies. That was a bona fide scandal, not only because such conduct is prima facie illegal, but also because scientists who deny independent researchers the opportunity to reproduce (invalidate) their results attack the very heart of the scientific enterprise.
Leaking the CRU emails - for all we know the work of a genuine whistle blower - was the only way to (a) produce documents responsive to valid FOIA requests, (b) expose CRU’s willful evasion of FOIA, and (c) subject CRU research products to the indispensable test of reproducibility.
There is no analogy between Climategate and the theft of the Heartland documents because (1) Heartland has no legal obligation to share its internal deliberations with the public, and (2) unlike collusion to evade FOIA, strategizing about how to raise money is not a violation of either law or professional ethics.
Update: Steven Mosher speculates, based on textual analysis, that Gleick wrote the fake strategy memo he claims was sent to him by an anonymous source. See Mosher’s comment #89946 on The Blackboard and related threads at ClimateAudit.Org: comment #342939, comment #324959, and comment #325062.
Feb 21, 2012
Climate scientist admits stealing docs from conservative think tank
Theft, deceit and outright lies: How ugly can climate science get?
Prominent climate scientist Peter H. Gleick relied on deceit and subterfuge to solicit a cache of sensitive internal documents from the conservative think tank The Heartland Institute before leaking them to the press—a fresh scandal that further darkens the highly charged debate on planetary climate change.
Gleick—an internationally recognized hydroclimatologist and author of the respected annual report “The World’s Water”—said he received an anonymous document in the mail that tipped him off to what he described as Heartland’s efforts to muddy public understanding of climate science and policy. He released the documents to expose their efforts “to cast doubt on climate science.”
In his blog on the Huffington Post, Gleick publicly confessed to deceitful tactics that he described as a serious ethical slip.
My judgment was blinded by my frustration with the ongoing efforts ... to attack climate science and scientists.
- Peter H. Gleick
“In a serious lapse of my own and professional judgment and ethics, I solicited and received additional materials directly from the Heartland Institute under someone else’s name,” Gleick wrote. “My judgment was blinded by my frustration with the ongoing efforts — often anonymous, well-funded, and coordinated — to attack climate science and scientists and prevent this debate … nevertheless I deeply regret my own actions in this case.”
Following his admission, Gleick’s resignation was accepted by the National Center for Science Education. Gleick declined to provide any additional information when contacted by FoxNews.com.
Heartland Institute president Joseph L. Bast blasted Gleick’s confession and actions, which he said put lives at risk and violated individual privacies.
“Gleick’s crime was a serious one. The documents he admits stealing contained personal information about Heartland staff members, donors, and allies, the release of which has violated their privacy and endangered their personal safety,” Bast wrote in a statement posted Monday night to the group’s website.
The documents consist of climate policy statements, fundraising documents, board meeting notifications and even tax filings—as well as a memo titled “Confidential Memo: 2012 Heartland Climate Strategy.” That memo, apparently the anonymous document that inspired Gleick to take action, describes plans to create an anti-global warming science campaign for grade schools that will “dissuad[e] teachers from teaching science.”
The Heartland Institute calls it a forgery—and Bast says he believes Gleick may have written it.
“Gleick also claims he did not write the forged memo, but only stole the documents to confirm the content of the memo he received from an anonymous source,” Bast said. “This too is unbelievable. Many independent commentators already have concluded the memo was most likely written by Gleick.”
“We hope Gleick will make a more complete confession in the next few days,” Bast wrote.
Heartland said it is seeking legal counsel before pursuing any action and plans to declare its intentions on Tuesday.
The subterfuge echoes the November 2009 “climate-gate” theft of thousands of emails from the climate science department of the University of East Anglia, a scandal that revealed scientists colluding to hide information and blacklisting each other from various journals.
That theft gave climate science a bad name—and Steve McIntyre, well-known author of the blog Climate Audit, said that this latest incident will continue to damage this field of science.
“No one should feel any satisfaction in these events, which have been highly damaging to everyone touched by them, including both Heartland and Gleick,” he wrote.
Marc Morano, publisher of the popular Climate Depot blog, told FoxNews.com that Gleick’s revelation of his activities could ruin his career.
“Climate activists have been frustrated for years at their inability to convince the public and Washington to ‘solve’ global warming. So Gleick took it upon himself to reverse this trend,” Morano said.
“He instead did massive harm to the cause he holds so dear.”
Feb 20, 2012
In Case of Heart[land] Attack, Break Glass
By Russell Cook
Forget about the science of man-caused global warming for just a bit (it’s settled anyway). Skeptic scientists are corrupt. Don’t listen to them. Oh, for you reporters out there, no need to listen to them since they are corrupt, and the science is settled. Plus, dumber reporters already gave them too much equal time in the name of “journalistic balance”, a concept only applicable to situations where reasonable questions exist.
One more critical detail: Do not, under any circumstances, question anything in the prior paragraph. Nothing to see, move along, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
And there you have it, all of the books, movies, articles, and blogs pushing the idea of man-caused global warming are just extreme overkill on those three basic talking points: settled science / corrupt skeptics / media telling us only one side of the issue because there is no other legitimate side.
There is not one thing new about DeSmogBlog’s attack on the Heartland Institute; in fact, elements of it go all the way back to at least 1992, and one person has been involved in this throughout that entire stretch of time: anti-skeptic book author Ross Gelbspan.
Gelbspan has been the star blogger at DeSmogBlog for all but the first three months of its existence. Joe Romm over at ThinkProgress had this to say about him in his 2008, Kudos to DeSmogBlog, “Ross Gelbspan, whose defining books Boiling Point and The Heat is On were a big part of the inspiration for starting the DeSmogBlog….”
As I pointed out right here at JunkScience in December, Gelbspan’s accusation about skeptic climate scientists being no different from ‘shill experts’ working for big tobacco is based entirely on a leaked coal industry memo that is not only out-of-context, it was a rejected proposal for a PR campaign, was never actually implemented, and it most certainly was not any kind of top-down industry directive that he, Al Gore and so many others claim it is. I also pointed out there and earlier at ClimateDepot how Gore says Gelbspan discovered the memo, yet Gore had the memo collection in his Senate office years before Gelbspan first mentioned them.
This particular problem becomes all the more worthy of deeper investigation when anyone takes a look at one of Gelbspan’s last articles at the Boston Globe, May 31, 1992. His “To some, global warming may be only hot air” sidebar (h/t to Brenton Groves for his complete article PDF scan, complete original available for online purchase here) hints at questionable motives of skeptics, and he concludes with quotes from Stephen Schneider and Al Gore, respectively:
It is journalistically irresponsible to present both sides as if it were a question of balance. Given the distribution of views, with groups like the National Academy of Science expressing strong scientific concern, it is irresponsible to give equal time to a few people standing out in left field.
T]he overall weight of evidence” of global warming “is so clear that one begins to feel angry toward those who exaggerate the uncertainty.
Fascinating. There’s the first and third talking points. All they needed was some reason to say ‘skeptics are corrupt’. Also interesting to see how Gelbspan prominently features Fred Singer in that sidebar, who just happened to be embroiled in a libel suit at the same time concerning a situation that Gore was not the least bit pleased about. You see, Gore didn’t like the appearance of his mentor Roger Revelle changing his mind and co-authoring an article with Fred Singer, so that action had to be stopped at all costs. Dr Singer won the lawsuit.
And so it goes to this day, anybody who has the audacity to question the idea of man-caused global warming must be marginalized in the eyes of the public by any means possible. Perhaps it’s time for the victims of this endless smear to put aside the science for a while, and take a (legal action) ax to their accusers.
