"Climate Change - Doubts, Denials, Scepticism, and Politics"

[Clinton Huxley]

James M. Taylor is senior fellow for environment policy at The Heartland Institute and managing editor of Environment & Climate News

From the post above. Re the Heartland Institute....

From Wiki...

Oil and gas companies have contributed to the Heartland Institute, including over $600,000 from ExxonMobil between 1998 and 2005.[25] Greenpeace reported that the Heartland Institute received almost $800,000 from ExxonMobil.[14] By 2008, ExxonMobil had stopped funding to Heartland.[dubious – discuss] Joseph Bast, president of the Heartland Institute, argued that ExxonMobil was simply distancing itself from Heartland out of concern for its public image.[25]
The Heartland Institute has also received funding and support from the tobacco company Philip Morris.[15]

[Coito ergo sum]

James M. Taylor is senior fellow for environment policy at The Heartland Institute and managing editor of Environment & Climate News

From the post above. Re the Heartland Institute....

From Wiki...

Oil and gas companies have contributed to the Heartland Institute, including over $600,000 from ExxonMobil between 1998 and 2005.[25] Greenpeace reported that the Heartland Institute received almost $800,000 from ExxonMobil.[14] By 2008, ExxonMobil had stopped funding to Heartland.[dubious – discuss] Joseph Bast, president of the Heartland Institute, argued that ExxonMobil was simply distancing itself from Heartland out of concern for its public image.[25]
The Heartland Institute has also received funding and support from the tobacco company Philip Morris.[15]

Bias noted. Question remains: are the quotes in his article accurate? We'll see.

Time Magazine's take on it -

There are exactly two lessons I can immediately draw from what's being called Climategate 2, the apparent hack and release of thousands of emails between climate scientists.
One: get a better email password! This cache of emails was taken from the hard drives of the CLimatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in Britain, most likely in the same theft that netted the thousands of emails released right before the Copenhagen climate summit two years ago. All of this drama—and the negative impact the original Climategate had on the global perception of climate science—might have been avoided with some decent digital cryptography. So right now, dear reader, immediately go read James Fallows's piece on email hacking in the Atlantic. (I'll wait.) And then read this Slate post on how to easily come up with unbreakable passwords.
Two: the good constables of Norfolk, who have been investing at the hack at East Anglia, are in no danger of giving Sherlock Holmes a run for his money. Seriously, it's been two years since the original Climategate, and as Richard Black points out in the BBC, they've apparently got bupkis, or whatever the British equivalent of that would be. And the investigation doesn't exactly seem to be on the frontburner—as Black writes, the police have spent all of $8,843 on the investigation.
Otherwise the new batch of emails seem to add little to what was raised two years ago. Climate scientists—especially when you quote selectively from emails they think are not for public viewing—can be hypersensitive to criticism and clannish. Within the climate science world, there are clearly differences of opinions on aspects of climate science, on the certainty of models and on the confidence we can have in any sweeping assessment of global warming. Those differences come out in the emails, sometimes very bluntly—but that to me isn't evidence of some kind of international conspiracy, but rather the not always pretty process of science and collective decision-making happening in real time.
Here's an example: in the Washington Post, Juliet Eilperin quotes one of the hacked emails:
An official from the U.K. Met Office [Peter Thorne], a scientific organization which analyzes the climate, writes to the Climate Research Unit's then-director Phil Jones at one point: “Observations do not show rising temperatures throughout the tropical troposphere unless you accept one single study and approach and discount a wealth of others. This is just downright dangerous. We need to communicate the uncertainty and be honest. Phil, hopefully we can find time to discuss these further if necessary [...]”
Later, the official adds, “I also think the science is being manipulated to put a political spin on it which for all our sakes might not be too clever in the long run.”
That might sound bad, although again, this appears to be part of a back-and-forth. But as Jocelyn Fong of the liberal press watchdog group Media Matters writes, these emails were sent in February 2005 and were discussing a first draft of what would become part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment. The final version of the chapter the two scientists were quarreling about seemed to reflect Thorne's concerns, and cited his research several times. Isn't that what this process supposed to be about?
Of courses, groups like Climate Progress and the Union for Concerned Scientists were quick to assure everyone that there was nothing to see in the emails—a little too quick, given that the hack was only published this morning and contained more than 5,000 emails. And of course, they instantly went on the offensive against reporters writing just about anything on the emails. It's true that some media outlets blew the original Climategate emails out of proportion, and that others will no doubt do so this time around. (Hello, Fox News! There you are, Daily Telegraph!) One thing I'm sure the latest email controversy will do is reinforce the belief among many in the environmental community that messaging—and the media—is the real reason the world has failed to get more than a foothold on climate policy. As an MSMember, I'm biased, but that explanation has never worked for me.
And as Andrew Revkin points out on Dot Earth, there were legitimate concerns raised in the original emails about the IPCC process—and how closed it could be to dissenting voices. But inquiry after inquiry showed that there was little more to the emails than that, and cleared scientists involved in the imbroglio like Michael Mann. The more balanced recent IPCC report on natural disasters had a wider variety of voices, and pleased even longtime critics. Ultimately, the emails are a sideshow—and the unhappy result that's almost certainly to come at the UN climate summit in Durban, which begins next week, will have little to do with them. But that's for later.

Read more: http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/2011/1 ... z1ejaJhYPv

[Clinton Huxley]

Phil "The Bad Astronomer" Plait's take on it....

More ado about nothing again...

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badas ... ing-again/

[Tero]

If you label it Climate Gate Scandal, it must be a scandal.

Reminds me of "teach the controversy" of evolution.

[Coito ergo sum]

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/22/climategate-2-0/ Climategate 2.0 emails – They’re real and they’re spectacular! (says the linked blog)

[Seth]

"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."

[Clinton Huxley]

If you label it Climate Gate Scandal, it must be a scandal.

Reminds me of "teach the controversy" of evolution.

Yep, with the denialists in the role of Michael Behe

[Santa_Claus]

Climate Scientology - Woo for the 21st Century.

I might start a register for those willing to be first in line for power cuts. and another for those willing to chip in to pay for Green "Technology"

My bet is both will be short lists

[Seth]

Climate Scientology - Woo for the 21st Century.

You can't use the word "Scientology™" it's a trademark of the Church of Scientology™ and they will hunt you down and shove a probe up your ass and "clear" you for messing with their woo.

How about "Climate Scientificalness"? Or "Climate Scientificness"?

I might start a register for those willing to be first in line for power cuts. and another for those willing to chip in to pay for Green "Technology"

Start a list for those willing to move out into wattle-and-daub huts, hair-shirts and grubbing for roots with a pointy stick while you're at it.

I think we should cross-correlate lists of anyone who has ever supported the "anthropogenic global warming" canard with driver's licenses, carbon-based heat and cooking fuel sources, non-natural zero-carbon footprint clothing and goods purchases and make it illegal to advocate anthropogenic global warming while one's personal CO2 footprint is not "carbon neutral."

Violations would involve revocation of driver's licenses, shutting off of carbon-based utilities, seizure of all non-carbon-neutral goods, and a plastic bag over the head to contain CO2 emissions.

My bet is both will be short lists

Why let them choose? They want to choose for us, so let's choose for them.

[Schneibster]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor ... ng-debate/

The Heartland Institute was the one I caught doing incestuous linking with Inhofe; Inhofe makes a ridiculous claim, links to an article on their site as evidence, the article he links to points to a different article on his site, which points to yet another article on their site, which makes the claim without any link to evidence anywhere nor any pointer toward any source whatsoever.

He thinks climate change is because "we're recovering from the Little Ice Age," which Media Matters characterizes as like "believing basketballs bounce because they're 'recovering from falling.'" http://mediamatters.org/blog/201111010006?frontpage My only quibble with Media Matters is that it's more like believing basketballs sit on the ground for a few hundred years before they bounce.

This individual is an idiot.

[Coito ergo sum]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor ... ng-debate/

The Heartland Institute was the one I caught doing incestuous linking with Inhofe; Inhofe makes a ridiculous claim, links to an article on their site as evidence, the article he links to points to a different article on his site, which points to yet another article on their site, which makes the claim without any link to evidence anywhere nor any pointer toward any source whatsoever.

He thinks climate change is because "we're recovering from the Little Ice Age," which Media Matters characterizes as like "believing basketballs bounce because they're 'recovering from falling.'" http://mediamatters.org/blog/201111010006?frontpage My only quibble with Media Matters is that it's more like believing basketballs sit on the ground for a few hundred years before they bounce.

This individual is an idiot.

The idiocy of the individual is irrelevant. The question is - what do the emails say, and what do they mean in context?

Mediamatters are biased sack of douchebags too, but that doesn't change the content of the emails.

There is no point focusing on the bias of the reporters here, when we have access to the quotes from the emails themselves.

[Santa_Claus]

Why let them choose? They want to choose for us, so let's choose for them.

I think you may be onto something there

[Schneibster]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor ... ng-debate/

The Heartland Institute was the one I caught doing incestuous linking with Inhofe; Inhofe makes a ridiculous claim, links to an article on their site as evidence, the article he links to points to a different article on his site, which points to yet another article on their site, which makes the claim without any link to evidence anywhere nor any pointer toward any source whatsoever.

He thinks climate change is because "we're recovering from the Little Ice Age," which Media Matters characterizes as like "believing basketballs bounce because they're 'recovering from falling.'" http://mediamatters.org/blog/201111010006?frontpage My only quibble with Media Matters is that it's more like believing basketballs sit on the ground for a few hundred years before they bounce.

This individual is an idiot.

The idiocy of the individual is irrelevant.

It's not irrelevant when evaluating the likelihood that their opinion corresponds to reality.

[Coito ergo sum]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor ... ng-debate/

The Heartland Institute was the one I caught doing incestuous linking with Inhofe; Inhofe makes a ridiculous claim, links to an article on their site as evidence, the article he links to points to a different article on his site, which points to yet another article on their site, which makes the claim without any link to evidence anywhere nor any pointer toward any source whatsoever.

He thinks climate change is because "we're recovering from the Little Ice Age," which Media Matters characterizes as like "believing basketballs bounce because they're 'recovering from falling.'" http://mediamatters.org/blog/201111010006?frontpage My only quibble with Media Matters is that it's more like believing basketballs sit on the ground for a few hundred years before they bounce.

This individual is an idiot.

The idiocy of the individual is irrelevant.

It's not irrelevant when evaluating the likelihood that their opinion corresponds to reality.

Well, if we're comparing mediamatters and the Heartland Institute, I'll call it a draw.

[macdoc]

right wingers are sooooo predictable....

what next....denial of evolution?......oops oh yeah ...y'all got that covered too..

fucking retards.........whose on first these days for the Grande Olé Putzes??....Gingrich??