CLIMATE DOCUMENTARY THIN ICE RAISING MONEY FOR US BROADCAST

by Gareth Renowden, Hot Topic, November 10, 2014

Thin Ice, the superb documentary about climate science and scientists filmed and produced by New Zealand and British climate scientists, has launched a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign to finance a new edit of the film so that it can be shown on public TV in the US. From the Kickstarter page:

Why do we need help? The global screening on Earth Day 2013 reached over 200 locations worldwide, and many others have seen it since. Now we have a chance to re-edit the film for screening on American Public Television – if we can raise the NZ$27,500 (US$22,000) in 30 days needed for the re-edit and promotion.

We want the film to be seen by as many people as possible on TV in Europe, Asia, Africa and South America. We already have subtitles in 8 languages, so with the shortened film Thin Ice will be that much more accessible to schools and communities worldwide.

With 14 days to go, the project still needs to raise NZ$20,000, so if you can spare a few dollars go to Kickstarter, make a few climate scientists happy, and help to get this excellent film put in front of a wider audience.

Share this:

• 1Share on Facebook
• 7Click to share on Twitter
• Click to share on Google+
• Click to share on Reddit
• Click to print
• More
• • http://hot-topic.co.nz/climate-documentary-thin-ice-raising-money-for-us-broadcast/

CARTER AND DE LANGE’S GWPF SEA LEVEL REPORT PLAGIARISES THEIR OWN HEARTLAND-FUNDED NIPCC PROPAGANDA

by Gareth Renowden, Hot Topic, May 27, 2014

Analysis of a report on sea level rise — Sea-level Change: Living with uncertainty — published earlier this month by Nigel Lawson’s UK climate lobby group the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), and written by NZ scientists Willem de Lange and Bob Carter, shows that it extensively plagiarises last year’s heavily criticised Non-governmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) report, funded and published by US lobby group the Heartland Institute. The GWPF report’s conclusions are taken word-for-word from chapter six of the NIPCC report — Observations: The Hydrosphere and Ocean[pdf] — also written by de Lange and Carter. Nowhere in the report do the report’s authors or the GWPF acknowledge the extent to which they rely on the earlier publication. Carter and de Lange fail to credit themselves, Heartland, or the NIPCC beyond a single reference to their chapter in the list of sources appended to the GWPF report.

Here is the first policy recommendation from the GWPF report:

1. Abandonment of ‘let’s stop global sea-level rise’ policies

No justification exists for continuing to base sea-level policy and coastal management regulation upon the outcomes of deterministic or semi-empirical sea-level modelling. Such modelling remains speculative rather than predictive. The practice of using a global rate of sea-level change to manage specific coastal locations worldwide is irrational, and should be abandoned.

This bears a striking resemblance to the first of the “conclusions” offered on p796 of chapter six of the NIPCC report:

Abandon “let’s stop global sea-level rise” policies

No justification exists for continuing to base sea-level policy and coastal management regulation on the outcomes of deterministic or semi-empirical sea-level modeling. Such modeling remains highly speculative. Even if the rate of eustatic sea-level change was known accurately, the practice of using a notional global rate of sea-level change to manage specific coastal locations worldwide is irrational, and it should be abandoned.

The eagle-eyed will notice that words in italics are edited from the GWPF version, but in every other respect the two sections are identical. The final two GWPF conclusions are also drawn verbatim from the NIPCC chapter, as are many other parts of the GWPF report.

Where it draws verbatim on the NIPCC work, the GWPF report is both unoriginal and wrong, and where it can be bothered to be original it is also wrong. In either case it is work of shoddy scholarship that reflects badly on its authors, the institutions with which they are associated, and the GWPF.

In addition to the GWPF report’s conclusions being copied from pseudoscientific propaganda commissioned by a US-based far-right lobby group, many other sections also draw word for word from the same source. Here’s part of the section on atolls and low-lying tropical islands from the GWPF version:

Seldom more than a metre or two above sea- level, all atolls and related sand-cay islands are at the continuing mercy of the same wind, waves, tides and weather events that built them. They are dynamic features of the seascape, and over timescales of decades to centuries they erode here, grow there, and sometimes disappear beneath the waves forever. Thus a coral atoll is not so much a ‘thing’ as it is a process, and they are obviously not good places in which to develop
major human population centres.

Section 6.2.1.6. of the NIPCC chapter includes the following paragraph on p776:

Seldom more than a meter or two above sea level, all atolls and related sand-cay and gravel-motu islands are at the continuing mercy of the wind, waves, tides, and weather events that built them. They are dynamic features of the seascape; over timescales of decades to centuries they erode here, grow there, and sometimes disappear beneath the waves forever. A coral atoll is not so much a “thing” as a process, and they are obviously not good places on which to develop major human population centers.

Once again, the GWPF report can be seen to be a lightly edited rehash of the work done by Carter and de Lange for the Heartland Institute, and for which Carter at least was paid significant sums. One wonders if the GWPF’s financial backers, whose privacy is so keenly defended by Lawson and GWPF director Benny Peiser, are aware that they are paying for once-over-lightly retreads of others' work?

The GWPF report includes little that is novel when compared with the NIPCC, but in the section headed Future environmental conditions and rates of change, it includes the following paragraph:

The IPCC and its scientific advisers remain committed to the view that global warming, albeit temporarily suspended, will resume and that sea-levels will rise. Other equally qualified but independent scientists, including a number of solar astrophysicists (viz. Bonev et al. 2004), are of the view that over the next few decades cooling is more likely than warming.

Carter and de Lange helpfully provide a full reference for the Bonev et al. paper, and it can be read on the web here. The paper speculates about the possibility of reduced solar activity in the 21st century, but nowhere does it mention climate change or suggest that climate cooling is more likely than warming in the “next few decades.”

Shoddy scholarship? Certainly. But the original source document — the NIPCC report — is even worse. Life is too short to go through even one NIPCC chapter with a fine-tooth comb — anyone with a working knowledge of the subject matter would be tearing their hair out long before a comb became useful — but one figure illustrates nicely the contempt with which Carter and de Lange treat the scientific literature and their readers.

On page 758, they include Figure 6.2.1.1.2, which de Lange and Carter say is “adapted from” a couple of papers on post glacial maximum sea level rise. Here is their figure:

Unfortunately, they do not credit the real source of their graph, which is Dr. Robert Rohde’s Global Warming Art project, via Wikipedia:

Shoddy scholarship or copyright theft? You be the judge…

The GWPF’s sea level report is nothing more than propaganda plagiarised from an American lobby group’s attempts to counteract the message coming from the scientific literature via the IPCC. Was it beyond Peiser et al. to apply original thought to the question of sea level rise, to find authors who would do more than misrepresent the current state of knowledge? The GWPF, recently forced to set up a campaigning arm in order to protect their charitable status, likes to present itself as an unbiased commentator on climate science, yet appears to be perfectly happy to commission and promote rubbish like this.

For de Lange and Carter, being caught out in self-plagiarism is potentially serious — more so for de Lange, who lists his NIPCC contribution as a scholarly publication on his University of Waikato page. Carter, who long ago cut his ties with academe and now flies under a flag of convenience provided by the Australian Institute of Public Affairs, a right-wing lobby group in the Heartland mould, has long since given up any pretense to doing real science.

Failing to correctly cite a source would get a first year university student heavily marked down. Misrepresenting what that source says would merit a fail. Outright plagiarism would probably get a student suspended. Yet de Lange and Carter — senior academics represented by the GWPF as experts to be taken seriously — commit all three sins in their work. In sceptic circles, they may still be regarded as experts, but in the real world their inexpertise and cavalier attitude to academic standards is all too evident. They are piss-poor propagandists profiting from the misfortune of others.

Link:  http://hot-topic.co.nz/carter-and-de-langes-gwpf-sea-level-report-plagiarises-their-own-heartland-funded-nipcc-propaganda/

Gareth Renowden: Canadian megafires send smoke round the globe

by gareth renowden, hot topic, july 11, 2013

Massize forest fires are raging beyond control in Quebec, sending huge plumes of smoke to the east. The Eastmain fire — top left in this image from NASA’s Earth Observatory — is spreading towards the east coast of James Bay, the southernmost extension of Hudson Bay, and is currently estimated to cover an area of 656,000 hectares (1.6 million acres). Smoke from the huge fires has already caused smog problems in Montreal and Maine, and is heading round the globe. On July 8 NASA’s Terra satellite spotted a great swathe of Canadian smoke crossing Norway and Sweden, and heading across the Baltic towards Finland.

The Eastmain fire is the largest wildfire in Canada since 1959, and is almost as big as all the wildfires that have burned in the US so far this year. Forecasts for the area show warm temperatures continuing for at least another 5 days, so the fire is likely to continue to spread.

Meanwhile, up on the Greenland ice sheet, Jason Box, Peter Sinclair and the Dark Snow team, who are investigating the effect of smoke particles deposited on the ice on melting, have successfully completed their first sampling mission. It’s well worth checking Sinclair’s blog for frequent updates — and lovely images — of the team’s progress.

http://hot-topic.co.nz/canadian-megafires-send-smoke-round-the-globe/

More loony tunes from Potty Peer Viscount Monckton of Brenchley (he's the 3rd generation of a peerage created in only 1957)

WARNING:  multiple head vises required.  He is probably the most friggin' incredible blatherer on this subject. Presenter Bryan Crump does a terrific job here.

by Gareth Renowden, Hot Topic, April 19, 2013

Last night Radio New Zealand’s Nights programme — a show with a long-standing commitment to excellent coverage of science and scientists — for some strange reason decided to broadcast an interview with Christopher, Viscount Monckton of Brenchley. Quite why they bothered to give him a platform remains to be seen, but as you might expect, the discount Viscount gave a peerless performance — a veritable Gish gallop of untruths, misdirections, and straightforward misrepresentations of climate science and economics. At various points you could hear presenter Bryan Crump struggling with his disbelief at what Monckton was asserting — but Monckton is such a polished performer that he was able to brazen his way through even the most arrant nonsense.

Here’s the RNZ podcast of the interview (which can also be downloaded here): 

I’ve gone through the interview with a fine tooth comb (so you don’t have to), and some of the more egregious errors, misdirections and deceptions are outlined below.

• Monckton claims that the 1995 IPCC report was rewritten by one man. It wasn’t.
• Monckton describes Mann’s 1998 hockey stick paper as “the most discredited result in the history of science”. In fact it was a seminal paper — the foundation for an explosion of paleoclimate studies, most of which directly confirm Mann’s original findings.
• Monckton states:

  “Now that I am an expert reviewer I have a bit more clout than I did before – you can only become an expert reviewer if you have a reasonable publication record in the reviewed literature which I now do”.
  

  Monckton has published no peer-reviewed papers in any credible journal.
• Monckton states:

  “The only change to the atmospheric constituents which is at all long-lasting, and even then not as long lasting as the UN climate panel pretends, is that if you’re putting large amounts of CO₂ into the atmosphere then they will hang around – [indistinct] – the literature says typically around 7 years on average”.

  Monckton is confusing — either deliberately or because he doesn’t understand what he’s talking about — the residence time for a single molecule of CO₂ in the atmosphere (which is actually about 5 years) with the persistence of CO₂levels in the atmosphere, which is much longer — measured in hundreds of years. There’s a good explanation here.
• Monckton states: “I’m saying there a dozen climate scientists who have arguably committed criminal fraud.” This is utter nonsense. Presenter Bryan Crump expresses disbelief, but doesn’t challenge Monckton to justify his extreme claims.
• Monckton claims that action to mitigate carbon emissions would close down the global economy and drive us all back to mud huts. No credible economist has ever suggested that.
• Monckton states:

  “The most dangerous form of electricity per terawatt hour generated turns out to be hydro electric power…”
  

  No, it isn’t. In fact hydro is amongst the safest of generation systems. Coal and oil kill many more people per Terawatt hour. For a good discussion of the relative safety of power generation systems, see here.
• Monckton claims that 70,000 people “more than would have died in a normal winter” died in Britain’s recent cold spell. This is a gross exaggeration. TheDaily Telegraph reported on March 24th that “official figures showed that there were more than 4,000 extra deaths in just five weeks as the wintry conditions persisted”.
• Monckton asserts that carbon mitigation costs account for “between 30% and 50%” of UK power prices, and that fossil fuel price increases have had little impact on recent increases. He appears to be making this up: a Bloomberg New Energy Finance report last year estimated that “electricity bills for UK consumers have risen more than 70% since 2005, largely due to increases in the cost of gas and coal feedstock for fossil-fuel generation”. Carbon mitigation policies will however increase UK power prices in the future.
• Monckton on climate feedbacks:

  “The feedbacks exist, but neither their magnitude nor even their sign — which way they’re going to work on global temperature — is known by any method of measurement or discernible by any theoretical method either. Two thirds of the global warming posited by the computer models is guesswork, and uneducated guesswork at that.”
  

  More utter nonsense. Monckton is either ignorant of the literature, or deliberately misrepresenting it. The single biggest feedback, that a warmer atmosphere will hold more water vapour is well-understood physics.
• Discussing global temperatures over the last 420,000 years Monckton states:

  “If you take the global temperature as inferred from the Vostok ice cores — they take the ratios of two distinct isotopes of oxygen in air that’s been trapped layer by layer”.
  

  Wrong. Temperatures are inferred from the oxygen isotopes in the water, not the air bubbles.
• Monckton presents the “fact” that global “temperatures have not varied by more than three Celsius or 1% in absolute terms either side of the long run median in all that time [420,00 years]” as evidence that “it’s extremely difficult to change global temperature at all”. Setting aside his idiosyncratic and misleading presentation of the temperature changes over the last few ice age cycles, in order to downplay the role of CO₂ in the ice age cycles he has to play up the influence of the Milankovitch cycles, describing them as huge.

  “What I’m saying is that if you have very large astronomical changes in the amount of warming we would expect to get here, you’ve got huge changes in the angle at which the sun comes in, huge changes in the distance of the earth from the sun over long periods, huge changes in the precession of the equinoxes, those are the three Milankovitch cycles […] and these cycles ought to have had, if the feedbacks are anything like as large as the UN’s climate panel imagines, ought to have been much greater than they were.”

  Unfortunately for Monckton’s thesis, the Milankovitch cycles do not cause “huge” changes in the amount of warming reaching the earth from the sun — in fact climate system feedbacks have to be strong enough to induce the big changes from ice age to interglacial triggered by relatively small changes in solar radiation over parts of the earth’s surface. CO₂ plays an important role in that process.
• Monckton continues to badly misrepresent the views of Myles Allen of Oxford University: “he said therefore we’re not going to see more than 2 [degrees] Celsius of warming this century, if that.” Allen, of course, said no such thing.

There’s much more that I could write about Monckton’s interview — his pomposity, verbosity, and frankly racist use of a cod Indian accent at one point [16:58] — but life really is too short. It’s taken me a couple of hours to listen to the interview and prepare this response, which illustrates the problem that Bryan Crump faced in dealing with the potty peer. He was having to interview a skilled orator, one apparently unafraid to make stuff up as he goes along, without being fully prepared either on the details of climate science being discussed or the tactics likely to be used by Monckton. The end result was the programme provided a platform for a propagandist to mislead the listening public.

As a public broadcaster, Radio New Zealand¹ has a responsibility to ensure that it reflects a diversity of views, but it has an equal responsibility to ensure that it doesn’t deliberately or inadvertently promote misinformation and lies. By interviewing Monckton, RNZ Nights did the latter, and now faces the unenviable task of cleaning up the potty peer’s mess. A programme with a real commitment to science coverage — one of my personal favourites on the channel — has let itself down in a big way. At a minimum, it should provide equal time for a real scientist to counter Monckton’s misinformation. Bryan Crump should also apologise to his listeners for allowing Monckton to get away with spouting nonsense on his show.

1. The local equivalent of BBC Radio Four in the UK, or perhaps NPR in the US.

http://hot-topic.co.nz/monckton-misfires-on-radio-new-zealand-a-bakers-dozen-of-errors-and-deception/

Hot Topic, NZ: Recursive fraudery: Monckton goes mad in Australia, by Gareth Renowden

Recursive fraudery: Monckton goes mad in Australia

by Gareth on February 28, 2013

Christopher, Viscount Monckton of Brenchley’s tour of Australia must be going very badly, because the “high priest of climate scepticism” is indulging in another of his increasingly desperate displays of attention seeking behaviour.

 

After giving a poorly attended lecture in Hobart last week, Monckton took umbrage at an article in the Sunday Tasmanian (on the web here) reporting the views of Tony Press, CEO of the University of Tasmania’s Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Co-operative Research Centre, who was not impressed by Monckton’s efforts. In response, Monckton has thrown his toys out of his fossil fuel funded pram, and called for the University of Tasmania to fire Press.

 

Here’s the last paragraph from his typically pompous and ludicrous letter [pdf] to the Vice Chancellor:

On any view, Press is not a fit and proper person to be employed in any capacity at the University of Tasmania. I hope that the University will investigate his misconduct and fraud and will dismiss him forthwith.

Connoisseurs of Monckton’s antics will note that this is a well established pattern of behaviour.

 

Remember when he took exception to the comprehensive dismantling of one of his lectures by John Abraham, and tried to get him fired? Nothing came of that threat — except that Abraham was motivated to become more active in countering climate crank nonsense wherever it appears.

In his latest attack on academic freedom, Monckton accuses Press of fraud:

The multiple falsehoods by Press published in an article in the Sunday Tasmanian on 24 February 2013 manifestly constitute frauds as defined in your policy. Press’ deceptions, false suggestions, suppressions of truth and other unfair means were calculated – individually and by mutual reinforcement – to occasion loss to me and continuing profit to himself.

Monckton’s hypocrisy here is breathtaking. He is himself a fraud, as I demonstrated in this post nearly three years ago. I might also note that in order to suffer a loss of reputation, you first have to have a good one. Anyone who cares to peruse the history of his climate activities, as recorded by Barry Bickmore at Monckton’s Rap Sheet, will find that the discount viscount has a chequered past, as well as plenty of evidence of Moncktonian toy-throwing and threats when criticised¹ — none of which amount to more than a considerable waste of time for the people he attacks.

 

Not satisfied with vilifying Press alone, Monckton has widened his hissy fit to call for the prosecution of climate scientists in general — another of his favourite themes. Here he is at WND²:

A senior Australian police officer specializing in organized-crime frauds tells me the pattern of fraud on the part of a handful of climate scientists may yet lead to prosecutions.

When the cell door slams on the first bad scientist, the rest will scuttle for cover. Only then will the climate scare – mankind’s strangest and costliest intellectual aberration – be truly over.

The strange and costly aberration here is not in the state of our understanding of the climate of our planet, but in the weird and wonderful mindset of people like Monckton who think that climate science is a scam designed to usher in world government.

 

Monckton brings his conspiracy roadshow to New Zealand in April for an extensive tour of the nation’s smaller venues. I’m sure he will get a warm welcome from the dim and deluded, and the local branch of the Flat Earth Society.

1. There’s a particularly amusing recent example from the Newcastle Herald here. [↩]
2. He has repeated the call in interviews on Sydney radio station 2GB in the last couple of days. [↩]

 

http://hot-topic.co.nz/recursive-fraudery-monckton-goes-mad-in-australia/

Gareth Renowden: ARCTIC SEA ICE FORECAST: IT’S GOING TO BE TOUGH TO STAY COOL

by GARETH renowden, hot topic, AUGUST 12, 2012

Bad news from the Arctic is piling up as we head into the last few weeks of the melting season. The various measures of sea ice area, volume and extent are plummeting towards a new record minimum. I have therefore reviewed the history of Arctic sea ice melting seasons since 2007, and compiled my own forecast of how the rest of the year is going to pan out. Remember, you read it here first…

When Arctic sea ice area sets a new record low in the next couple of weeks, the usual suspects¹ will say: “You can’t trust area, sea ice extent is the only valid metric.”

When Arctic sea ice extent sets a new record low in September, the following arguments will be run in parallel:

• There will be a frantic search for a definition of extent in which a new record was not set
• There will be a complaint that the satellite record has been blighted by the failure of a sensor and the calibrations needed to get a new sensor in operation have corrupted the record²
• It will be claimed that it was all caused by the major Arctic storm that hit in August, and thus can’t be attributed to global warming³
• It’s cyclical — it’s all happened before, in the 1930s⁴, and is therefore nothing unusual
• That it’s irrelevant, because it’s not global and not happening where anyone lives so can’t possibly matter.

When the sea ice extent and area anomalies blow out to record levels in early October because of the delayed freeze-up, there will be silence.

When the re-freeze starts, and the Arctic basin is covered in ice once more (early December), Anthony Watts will report on the record rate of ice formation, calling it a “stunning recovery.”

When a cold spell hits the Eastern US and/or Western Europe in December/January, caused by a major Arctic Oscillation excursion and the resulting big slow-moving loops in the polar jetstream⁵, the usual suspects will cackle loudly that global warming has suffered another mortal blow from which it will never recover.

Long range forecast for the next five years, until the Arctic Ocean is ice free in summer?             Rinse and repeat.

1. Being Watts, Goddard, Bastardi, Jo Nova, Delingpole, the GWPF, Morano and their NZ poodle, Richard Treadgold. [↩]
2. With added bonus insinuations of fixing and fraud by “warmist” scientists. [↩]
3. In 2007, the record low was all down to winds, remember? [↩]
4. Or pick a date (any date), based on an old press clipping reporting anecdotal evidence of ice loss. [↩]
5. A result of massive heat loss from the Arctic Ocean during the refreeze, see the work of Jennifer Francis, reported earlier. [↩]

http://hot-topic.co.nz/arctic-sea-ice-forecast-its-going-to-be-tough-to-stay-cool/

Gareth Renowden: Exclusive -- Flat Earth Society Appeal to New Zealand Climate Sceptics -- Join us!

EXCLUSIVE: FLAT EARTH SOCIETY APPEAL TO NZ CLIMATE SCEPTICS – JOIN US!

by GARETH renowden, hot topic, JULY 16, 2012

As New Zealand’s climate “science” coalition, in the guise of the NZ Climate Science Education Trust gets its day in court in its long running attempt to get the NZ temperature record declared invalid, a mole inside the Flat Earth Society has sent me the text of a letter being handed out to the CSET and its representatives outside the High Court in Auckland this morning. It is self-explanatory…

Updated 10:40 a.m.: By the miracle of modern technology, we have an image of the Flat Earthers in action, or perhaps inaction…

An Open Letter and Appeal to Lords Terence Dunleavy and Bryan Leyland of the Climate Science Education Trust.

On this day 16 July in the year 2012 in the Northern Township of Auckland, Middle Earth.

On the Occasion of the Lords’ Good Endeavours to Strike Down the temperature muddlings of the Dark Lords of the National Institution of Water and Atmosphere in the High Court of our Land.

Hear Ye Honourable and Esteemed Lords of Middle Earth.

We of the Flat Earth Society would like to extend to you a hand of friendship and solidarity.

For too long charlatans have used the black magic of peer-reviewed science to hide truthes from the public. They have falsified moon landings, spread the lie of global warming, and most dastardly of all, they say the earth is round! We at the Flat Earth Society have had centuries of experience in dealing with such fabrications.

At last, we have found another, like-minded group of lonely souls such as the Climate Science Education Trust who are bravely fighting the wave of charlatan science.

We, too, have diagrams that explain our cause.

The Flat Earth Society and the Lords of the Climate Science Education Trust share common cause and concern in the threatening face of scientific research.

Like you, we have been downtrodden by an extraordinarily complex conspiracy of governments who have bludgeoned us with their scientific evidence.

We, too, have suffered the Dark Arts of Peer Review — and publication in the Devil’s Papers such as Nature and Science. Like NASA and other institutions before them, petulant rubes like NIWA have falsified records of temperatures around Middle Earth to show that our world is warming.

We are horrified at the recent, similar episodes in the United States of America where there is much talk of temperature records being broken across the States – and it seems the entire Earth has been taken in by this nonsense.

We must also note that there is another large force in the background called Google Earth, that ignores the existence of the Ice Wall and the Great Turtles that support our Earth. We would seek help to combat this Great Travesty of Modernity. Perhaps the pieces of gold that you have found to help your case could be shared with us?

We wish you luck in your endeavours this week.

The letter is signed by Nathaniel Pipe-Blower, Tzar and 33rd degree Grand Wizard Master of the first inverted pancake lodge of the totally awesome Flat Earth Society Ltd.

http://hot-topic.co.nz/exclusive-flat-earth-society-appeal-to-nz-climate-sceptics-join-us/

Warning! Do not attempt to read this post while ingesting liquids or solids! The redoubtable Gareth Renowden pounces on the potty peer again! PRAT WATCH #4: FOUNDATION AND EMPIRE [Viscount Christopher “I’m no potty peer” Monckton tours the USA and Canada at the behest of his friends at the Heartland-lite Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (aka the Billionaire Liberation Front)]

PRAT WATCH #4: FOUNDATION AND EMPIRE

by GARETH renowden, hot topic, MARCH 20, 2012

While the noble Lord, Viscount Christopher “I’m no potty peer” Monckton tours the USA and Canada at the behest of his friends at the Heartland-lite Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (aka the Billionaire Liberation Front), his Australian admirers, led by former Climate Sceptic Party candidate Chris Dawson, have announced the creation of… wait for it… The Monckton Foundation. This remarkable institution is set to “open its doors” this month, and has, as you might expect, some laudable, if long-winded goals:

The Lord Monckton Foundation shall conduct research, publish papers, educate students and the public and take every measure that may be necessary to restore the primacy and use of reason in science and public policy worldwide, especially insofar as they may bear upon the rights of the people fairly and fully to be informed, openly and freely to debate, and secretly by ballot to decide who shall govern them, what laws they shall live by and what imposts they shall endure.

It has a vision too — it may be having them still — issued by the charter of Monckton himself:

The Lord Monckton Foundation stands as the wall of the West, the redoubt of reason, the sentinel of science, the fortress of freedom, and the defender of democracy.

Or perhaps a pied-à-terre for a pompous peer? For an organisation spawned in a former colony, the Foundation has a high opinion of Australia’s former rulers:

With the British Empire, governance became truly global for the first time. The world, said the philosopher Santayana, never had sweeter masters.

The Foundation has questions. Lots of them:

Is science dead? Must reason fail? Shall objectivity be slaughtered again on the pagan altar of mere ideology? Is life now objectionable, liberty deplorable, the pursuit of happiness a crime? Has the nation had its day? Is the globalization of governance really a public good? Can democracy survive it? Should not the use of the ballot-box be extended? Should not every supranational and global institution of governance be elected?

Meanwhile, back in the USA, the good Lord demonstrates the full extent of his grasp of reason, objectivity, ideology and the primacy of the ballot box by publicly endorsing “birther” claims that President Obama was not born in the USA and therefore not entitled to be President:

I have watched Sheriff Arpaio’s press conference in AZ and have examined some of the evidence directly. It is clear – as Alex Jones rightly said on the day when Obama first put up his faked “long-form birth certificate” on the White House website – that a fraud has been committed, and that, absent a valid official record of Obama’s birth or a very good explanation of the anomalies in the published version, he is not qualified to stand for re-election as President.[…] This is beginning to look like a widespread, high-level fraud.

These frauds are everywhere: hockey sticks, birth certificates, hidden declines. Whatever next, one wonders? A conspiracy to put Monckton in front of any legislature daft enough to have him? Funnily enough…

At the invitation of Assemblywoman Shannon Grove, R-Bakersfield, Monckton is coming to Sacramento March 21 to speak to the Legislature, but said that he expects a “stormy session.”

Not surprising, given his opinion of the sunshine state:

“But flaky la-la-land California will go on pursuing this senseless [climate] policy right into insolvency and bankruptcy,” Monckton said. “State expansion will stop. Cap and trade will collapse. And Democrats will be forced out of office, hopefully not to be replaced by the soggy Republicans which have dominated the party for some years.”

And finally: John Abraham, the engineering professor at the University of St.Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota, who famously attracted the ire of the potty peer by having the temerity to tenaciously, and devastatingly debunk a Moncktonian peroration, is profiled in a recent St. Thomas Magazine. All the 1,000 plus people who signed the Hot Topic post supporting John against threats of legal action by Monckton should read the article. It shows just how much support he received from his university, and what real academic freedom is all about. Perhaps a new campaign? John Abraham for head of the Monckton Foundation! Who better to defend science, objectivity and reason against ideology?

[Build Me Up Buttercup]

http://hot-topic.co.nz/prat-watch-4-foundation-and-empire/ 


More hilarity below:

Gareth Renowden, Hot Topic: (NOT SO SIMPLE) TWIST OF FATE [on Peter Gleick and the Heartland Institute]

(NOT SO SIMPLE) TWIST OF FATE

by GARETH renowden, hot topic, FEBRUARY 21, 2012

Something I didn’t expect: Peter Gleick, the director of thePacific Institute, a vocal opponent of climate denial and a highly respected scientist, turns out to have been behind the leak of the Heartland Institute board meeting documents that have been creating waves for the last week. Gleick made the admission in an article at Huffington Post earlier today (NZ). He reports that he 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.

In order to attempt to verify that document’s contents, he:

…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.

Gleick goes on to apologise for what he calls “a serious lapse of my own and professional judgment and ethics”.

As you might expect, the usual suspects are all over Gleick’s admission like a rash, but it’s important to retain some perspective here. The people so ready to decry Gleick’s actions were notably silent about the theft and release of private emails from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. The Heartland Institute was central to promoting discussion of those emails, and continues to paint their contents as a scandal. Their hypocrisy, and that of Watts, McIntyre and the rest of the Heartland fellow travellers, is breathtaking.

Nevertheless, Gleick should not have done what he did. However valuable the public service he performed in exposing the reality of Heartland’s climate lobbying and the roots of its funding — and that information is hugely important to any “rational discussion” of why, more than 20 years after the problem was first identified, the USA and the world remains unable to take meaningful action on emissions reductions — the means he chose were not those we would expect from a respected senior scientist.

However this plays out in the longer term, it’s clear that Peter Gleick played the role of whistleblower, bringing the attention of the world to the nefarious activities of a well-funded right wing lobby group with mysterious “anonymous donors” and zero accountability for their actions. It’s a job that any worthwhile investigative journalist would have loved to have done — and which should have been done long ago.

Together with the sterling efforts of John Mashey, the leaked documents confirm in detail what many had suspected. Heartland have made a career out of subverting the truth, the law, and the democratic process.

Gleick might pay a heavy price for his indiscretion, however laudable his goals. Heartland, its funders and the pet “scientists” on their payroll must be made to pay the higher price. Their actions have condemned future generations to far worse than any lapse of judgement or ethics. The real price of Heartland’s policies will be paid in human suffering, and for that there will be no forgiveness.

See also; The Guardian, George Monbiot on why We need to know who funds these tinktank lobbyists, Union of Concerned Scientists report on How Corporations Corrupt Science at the Public’s Expense, Josh Rosenau on parallels between Heartland’s climate “education” tactics and that of creationists, plus Peter Sinclair on Heartland’s abject pleading for tobacco money as recently as 1999 — and let’s not forget they arer still getting it today, and are happy to have a “smoker’s lounge” on their web site.

http://hot-topic.co.nz/not-so-simple-twist-of-fate/