What sort of crazy is the warming denialist?

I’ve got to stop looking over there.

Goddard’s got a post up showing the great disregard he has for the facts, and the law, and history, etc., etc., etc.  It may be an unintentional showing, but there it sits, “like a mackerel in the moonlight, both shining and stinking.”

Jerome Corsi, that serial fictionalizer of vital issues, has a book out promoting his slimy schemes besmirch President Obama.  Goddard urges people to buy it.

But they really pile on in the comments.  It’s almost as if Casey Luskin had a whole family just like himself, and they got together to whine about Judge Roberts again.

Warming denialism, creationism and birthers — is it all just three minor variations on the same brain-sucking virus?  Or could three different diseases produce the same sort of crazy on so many different issues?

I’m reminded of the old saw that you cannot reason a person out of a position he didn’t reach by reason.  These guys will never see the light.  Heaven knows, it ain’t evidence that gets ‘em where they are now.

Previous posts at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub:

• “Stubborn Birthers soldier on”
• California court tosses out the challenge
• “Birther Karma:  Hoaxers get hoaxed on alleged Kenya document”
• “Birther control“
• Birthers wallow in the gutter
• NBC on the issue (note links)
• Blogger indicted for threats against Obama
• Election certified
• “Fail repeated”
• “6 ways challenges to Obama’s citizenship fail”

Special kind of birther crazy:

• “Bush appointed judge smacks down Orly Taitz,” at Dispatches from the Culture Wars
• “Taitz appeals to UN for protection,” Dispatches from the Culture Wars

No, DDT is not the easy answer to malaria

Roger Bate and Richard Tren, the Dynamic Duo of DDT, have been busy lately.  Bate appears to have found additional funding from the radical right-wing American Enterprise Institute, where I gather he has been prowling the halls trying to sell others there on the idea that DDT is an easy solution to malaria, and only mad, despotic environmentalist megalomaniacs have stopped DDT from saving Africa from malaria, the American economy from depression, and Major League Baseball from the designated hitter rule.  (I thought it odd that his bio doesn’t mention his work for tobacco interests as integral to his organizing.)

Graphic from a 1950s-era ad for DDT. No, it's not right -- it's Madison Avenue then, expressing the claims of the "DDT-is-good-for-you" hoaxsters of today.

I don’t exaggerate much, if at all.

So, I’ll bore you with rebuttals over the space of the next few days.  Especially among the right-wing echo chambers, comments are frequently moderated to oblivion when they are allowed at all.

For example, there is a site that calls itself Minnesota Prager Discussion Group — a site for Dennis Prager groupies.  Here’s a post that may have been prompted by a Dennis Prager broadcast, but which cites a scurrilous pamphlet written by Bates and Tren, with Donald Roberts, carrying all sorts of calumny against environmentalists, health care professionals, diplomats, environmentalists and scientists — cloaked in a high degree of disrespect for readers who, they hope, have never bothered to read Rachel Carson and have forgotten everything they may have ever read about DDT and environmental harms it causes.

Here’s the post on DDT and malaria there:

Malaria Can Be Easily Controlled by DDT

Posted on February 2, 2011 by Glenn H. Ray

DDT Still Critical in Fight against Insect-Borne Diseases

Through a mix of environmental fervor, self-interest and disregard for evidence-based policy, United Nations (UN) agencies are misleading the public about the insecticide DDT — mistakenly claiming it is not needed and can be eliminated globally by 2020, says Donald Roberts, emeritus professor of tropical medicine at Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Roger Bate, the Legatum Fellow in Global Prosperity at the American Enterprise Institute, and Richard Tren, the executive director of Africa Fighting Malaria.

• UN agencies are misleading the public by claiming that malaria can be controlled without insecticides, notably DDT; the stated aim is to stop DDT use globally by 2020.
• UN agencies are committing scientific fraud by deliberately and incorrectly interpreting data on malaria control using noninsecticide methods.

While DDT is no panacea, it is still a critical weapon in the battle against malaria and other insect-borne diseases, say Roberts, Bate and Tren.

Source: Roger Bate, Donald Roberts and Richard Tren, “The United Nations’ Scientific Fraud against DDT,” American Enterprise Institute, January 21, 2011.

Above information came from the National Center of Policy Analysis

Dennis Prager regularly reminds his listeners that many tens of thousands of lives can be saved by approving DDT uses in certain areas in Africa.

Oy.  Helluva lotta error and deception packed in a couple hundred words.

So, I tried to help the “discussion group” get to some more accurate understanding of DDT and malaria.

Ed Darrell, on February 2, 2011 at 4:53 pm said:

1. There is no shortage of DDT.

2. Not only is DDT not a panacea, it is increasingly not effective against malaria-carrying mosquitoes.

3. Richard Tren leads an astro-turf organization that collects hundreds of thousands of dollars, but does very little if anything to actually fight malaria. These sorts of diatribes increase contributions to his organization’s coffers, but they don’t help fight malaria.

4. In actual practice over the last decade, bednets have proven to reduce malaria by 50% to 85% in areas where they are deployed; DDT is only 25% to 50% effective.

5. Bednets cost about $10 and last about five years — $2.00 per year. DDT costs upwards of $12 per application, and must be applied twice per year — $24.00 per year. Bednets stop mosquitoes cold. DDT depends on mosquitoes biting people first, then resting on a DDT-coated wall — and we hope that it’s a young mosquito that has not yet contracted malaria itself and is not shedding the parasites.

6. Malaria deaths, worldwide, are lower now than at any other time in human history. Since the U.S. stopped using DDT on cotton in 1972, the death rate to malaria has been cut in half. The death toll to malaria is, today, less than 25% of what it was when DDT use was at its peak. Statistically, it appears that cutting DDT use also cuts malaria.

7. We know that’s not the case, but those statistics prove that we can beat malaria without DDT — as indeed, the U.S. Army beat malaria without DDT to build the Panama Canal by 1915, 24 years before DDT was discovered to have any insecticidal properties. In the U.S., with the great aid of the Tennessee Valley Authority, malaria was essentially wiped out by 1939 — seven years before DDT became available for use against mosquitoes. No nation relying on DDT has been able to eradicate malaria.

Roger Bate, Donald Roberts and Richard Tren commit health care terrorism when they tell their fraud-laced stories against the UN and the health care professionals who fight malaria. Shame on them.

Did the author read anything I wrote?  He responded, politely for a guy who didn’t quite get it:

Glenn H. Ray, on February 9, 2011 at 12:19 pm said:

Ed Darrell: Thank you very much for this information.

Let us assume every item you mention is accepted beyond debate..

Malaria still ravages populations in Africa. We are not beating malaria without DDT.

Dennis Prager agrees with you regarding the value of bed nets and from his visits to Africa, has encouraged financial support to increase their availability.

The question still remains, why is DDT still banned rather than being available for use where needed?

My responses:

Sometimes the facts stare us in the face and we can’t see them.

You said:

Malaria still ravages populations in Africa. We are not beating malaria without DDT.

We have cut malaria 75% from when DDT was heavily used. We are beating malaria as best we can since DDT advocates overused DDT and made it ineffective against most populations of mosquitoes. (WHO’s program to eradicate malaria was effectively ended in 1965 because overuse of DDT by large agricultural interests had bred mosquitoes resistant to and immune to DDT; today, every mosquito on Earth carries the alleles that make them resistant and immune to DDT.)
It doesn’t matter how much we whine about DDT being “banned,” DDT doesn’t work to beat malaria now, and it was never intended to be more than a very temporary solution while medical care, treating the humans, did the real work.

When we beat malaria (as in the U.S.), the fact that humans do not have the disease means that mosquitoes cannot catch it from humans. That means the mosquito bites go back to being annoyances, and we don’t need to worry about them.

Malaria is a disease of humans. If we concentrate on the mosquitoes, we can reduce it, temporarily. If we concentrate on treating the disease, and preventing the disease in humans, we can forget about mosquitoes.

Dennis Prager agrees with you regarding the value of bed nets and from his visits to Africa, has encouraged financial support to increase their availability.

Then why is he talking smack against them? He’s talking untruths about DDT, untruths carried by the anti-bednet lobby, like the so-called “Africa Fighting Malaria” lobbying group. Bednets are twice to almost four times as effective as DDT, if they are used exclusive of each other. You don’t get that impression from Prager. Bednets cost a fraction of what DDT treatments cost. Bednets are effective longer than DDT treatments.

We can beat malaria without DDT. We can’t beat malaria without bednets. If he has no truck against bednets, Prager should get out of the bed of the anti-bednet, pro-DDT lobby, and talk about beating malaria.

The question still remains, why is DDT still banned rather than being available for use where needed?

No, the question is, why aren’t you listening?

DDT is not banned anywhere in Africa, and never has been. DDT is freely available to any government who wishes to use it — or private groups who wish to use it.

DDT doesn’t work as it once did, plus, it’s a deadly poison to fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and small mammals. DDT is unsafe in use outside of Indoor Residual Spraying, where it is increasingly less effective — and Africans are nervous about IRS because their children keep getting sick with strange new diseases even when the kids are safe from malaria. There may be no solid connection between the new syndromes and DDT, but since DDT is not a panacea, not as effective as untreated bednets, and much less effective than treated bednets — why take a chance?

Opposition to DDT today comes from Dennis Prager’s and AFM’s friends in business in Africa. The only serious opposition to DDT I’ve found in Africa was in Uganda, where businessmen sued to stop spraying two years ago.

What in the world makes you think there isn’t all the DDT out there that health workers need?

Any discussion of fighting malaria that involves DDT takes away from the serious fight to beat malaria. A lot of westerners think DDT is a magic potion, and that if we just poison the hell out of Africa with the stuff, we can beat malaria without serious effort, without serious research, without improving the lives of the poor people of Africa who are victimized by the disease.

We beat malaria in the U.S. by improving housing, beefing up public health services, and increasing incomes of families of victims. It took 20 years of concentrated work — all before DDT was even discovered to kill bugs.

To beat malaria in Africa, we must improve housing, beef up medical care, both diagnoses and treatment of the disease, and improve the lives of the families of victims to prevent new disease-causing bites.

It’s tough work. Prager appears not to have the stomach for it. If so, he should say so, instead of claiming, falsely, that DDT could do the job.

Malaria proves a tough foe, difficult to beat. DDT could play a very small role in the defeat of malaria, but more DDT won’t help, and malaria isn’t winning because DDT isn’t available. DDT is readily available. DDT doesn’t work anymore, and DDT was never intended to be a sole weapon.

And:

Lancet recently devoted most of an issue to fighting malaria, and how to beat it. Lancet is perhaps the world’s leading medical journal, certainly among the top three, with no axe to grind, and concerned with improving the condition of humans throughout the world — from a medical care perspective.

The articles come from the world’s leading malaria fighters and those in the vanguard of research on how to beat malaria.

Here’s the executive summary (8 pages in .pdf form).

Did you notice? No call for DDT.

Can you and Dennis Prager please get on board with the campaign to beat malaria? Howling about false, junk science claims that DDT should be used to poison Africa isn’t a ticket to get on that malaria-fighting train.

Mr. Ray responded again:

Thank you again for your interaction. It has been my understanding that many of the claims about the toxicity of DDT to the living groups you have listed has been exaggerated, particularly in regard to the bird populations.
As you might note, malaria control is not my field of expertise, but I have read this claim from two sources over the past decade, but I cannot refer you to them.
I shall remember your ‘corrections’ in any discussion I might have in the future about DDT.

I am certain Dennis has no connections with any businesses in Africa dealing with DDT.

Denial among people who admit that they don’t know much about the topic is really quite amazing, isn’t it?

I made one more comment, but Ray has held it in his site’s moderation queu for enough days I am convinced he plans to leave it there.  Here is what I posted that he has not yet let through:

Ed Darrell, on February 10, 2011 at 12:49 am said: Your comment is awaiting moderation.

Thank you again for your interaction. It has been my understanding that many of the claims about the toxicity of DDT to the living groups you have listed has been exaggerated, particularly in regard to the bird populations.

Peer review research over the past 40 years has borne out the early research from 1945 through 1961 that showed DDT is a killer of birds, reptiles, fish, amphibians and small mammals. I am unaware of any study anywhere that denies this toxicity, except with regard to insects who produce new generations quickly enough to evolve resistance and immunity.

Discover magazine looked for studies saying DDT doesn’t harm larger animals, but found none. In November 2007 the magazine noted:

In fact, Carson may have underestimated the impact of DDT on birds, says Michael Fry, an avian toxicologist and director of the American Bird Conservancy’s pesticides and birds program. She was not aware that DDT—or rather its metabolite, DDE—causes eggshell thinning because the data were not published until the late 1960s and early 1970s. It was eggshell thinning that devastated fish-eating birds and birds of prey, says Fry, and this effect is well documented in a report (pdf) on DDT published in 2002 by the Department of Health and Human Services’ Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR). The report, which cites over 1,000 references, also describes how DDT and its breakdown products accumulate in the tissues of animals high up on terrestrial and aquatic food chains—a process that induced reproductive and neurological defects in birds and fish.

DDT kills birds outright, through acute poisoning. That was what first sounded the alarms at Michigan State University, the University of Wisconsin, and a dozen other places across the U.S. DDT accumulates in fat tissues, and poisons the brains of migrating birds when they are under stress during migration. DDT poisons chicks of birds in the eggs, killing them outright, or making them unable to feed after hatching. DDT makes female birds unable to lay competent eggs (thins the eggshells), which means even if the chick is free of the toxins, the egg can’t protect it through incubation. DDT scrambles the sex organs of birds, making hermaphrodites, and making both genders unable to mate successfully.

Most of these death mechanisms apply in other species, too. The saving grace for humans is that we are so large. DDT doses required for much of this documented damage is much higher than we get. Still, in humans, modest amounts of DDT mimic estrogen, producing premature onset of menses in little girls, and swollen mammaries and shrunken testes in boys.

There are several studies that indicate the carcinogenic effects of DDT are weak in humans. Those studies frequently are touted as having “proven DDT harmless.” Not at all. They only show that DDT isn’t as bad as tobacco in causing cancers. That’s not an endorsement of health.

As you might note, malaria control is not my field of expertise, but I have read this claim from two sources over the past decade, but I cannot refer you to them.

Any source you have will trace back to the junk science promulgated by Steven Milloy, a former henchman of the tobacco lobby, and Gordon Edwards, a formerly respected entomologist who appears to have gone off the deep end with an obsession against Rachel Carson. Neither ever published any research to back up their claims. Edwards is dead, and Milloy is a long-time political propagandist — you won’t see any research from them.

Search Pub-Med. Check the ornithology and wildlife journals. Under U.S. law, were DDT not a deadly toxin, EPA could not ban it. DDT manufacturers sued EPA to overturn the ban, and they lost twice. The courts agree that the evidence against DDT is more than sufficient for regulation of the stuff as EPA did.

I shall remember your ‘corrections’ in any discussion I might have in the future about DDT.

Thank you. Feel free to check my blog, Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub, for further developments on malaria.

The hoax case for DDT, and against Rachel Carson, the UN, the World Health Organization and all of science and medical care, is getting a significant set of boosts from Tren, Bate and Roberts this winter.  Let us hope, if only for the sake of truth and accuracy, that their stuff doesn’t get any more traction than it already has.

Other recent postings on DDT and malaria and policy

• George Clooney’s malaria? DDT didn’t cure it, January 25, 2011
• Annals of Hoaxes: American Enterprise Institute sends out hoax backgrounder on DDT and trade barriers, January 25, 2011
• Roger Bates’ simple lie about DDT, January 22, 2011
• Annals of DDT: 1946 warning of the dangers of DDT, January 6, 2011
• Lens incompetence: Watts Up looks through the wrong end of the telescope, December 27, 2010
• EPA at 40: Director Jackson claims too much?, December 18, 2010
• President’s Malaria Initiative: Plans for FY 2011, December 14, 2010
• Mandy Moore Talks Mosquito Nets – ABC News, December 13, 2010
• Ducking the quacks on DDT, December 9, 2010
• Quote of the moment: 1971, U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia orders a review of the safety of DDT

Watt’s Up puts collective hand into the fan – er, um, windmill

In the march to brand all non-fossil fuel use as politically incorrect (at least for those who deny global warming should get our policy making attention), the poobahs and commenters at Watts Up have outdone themselves in seeing conspiracies under the ice, mountains where there are molehills, and molehills where there are mountains.

If you wonder whether global warming deniers are biased, Watts’s blog just confessed.

We’re quite frozen in here in Texas, you know.  The unseasonable warm air (high pressure) over the Arctic that warms the sea and melts the ice also pushed the Arctic air south over the U.S.  Where that frigid air met wet air coming from the Gulf of Mexico, weather ensued (yeah, warming may have increased the amount of moisture, too — but that just makes the anti-warmists go blind, so we won’t say it).

Texas got hit with rolling power blackouts last week, when the cold weather increased demand for electricity and crimped the ability of several utilities to bring on power plants build to generate to meet such extra demands.  Some coal-fired plants were off-line, a couple froze up, and natural gas supplies were not in the right place at the right time, so some natural gas plants couldn’t fire up.

But Anthony Watts, seeing spooks behind every clump of Texas Bluestem (Big or Little), promptly got a post up blaming wind power turbines. His post’s headline gives you the whole story as Watts spun it:  “We Spent Billions on Wind Power… and All I Got Was a Rolling Blackout.”

If you’re wondering just what in the world he was thinking, you’d be demonstrating more common sense than the average global warming denier.

Freezing rain had been predicted, but not so much as Texas got.  The follow-up snow also surpassed predictions and expectations — for example, the “skiff to 1″ accumulation” predicted for Dallas turned into 5″ to 7″ through much of the area — stopping any hope that the ice might clear so schools could reopen.  Texas got slammed by the same enormous storm that slammed much of the Midwest and Northeast, with similar results.  For Super Bowl host cities Fort Worth, Arlington and Dallas, that created big problems.  Texas is not equipped to deal with much winter weather, let alone so much in so little time.

In cold weather, power plants fail.  Sometimes power lines fail when the plants stay up.  Sometimes it’s just a question of wheeling power from one part of a local, regional or national grids.  Sometimes the wheeling fails because a switch fails or . . . a failure of capacity can have myriad causes.  In the past, we covered for these problems with additional generating capacity, in excess of what might be needed at any point — mandated by state and local utility commissions to insure power at all times.

Texas deregulated electrical power more than a decade ago, too — which means that market forces govern what gets built and whether there is any emergency generating capacity.

Free enterprise cannot take any blame in the kingdom of those who deny climate and economics.  So when the rolling blackouts plagued Texas, the search for a scapegoat became frenetic.   The question was, who could take the blame that could cast what was perceived to be the most aspersional light on Al Gore, the case for global warming, and anything approaching “green energy?”

Ah, there’s the target!   Wind power.

Watts Up quickly claimed that Texas windmill-generated electricity had failed, if not in fact, then in economic hypothesis.  If the windmills didn’t fail themselves, it must be that the money invested in them could have been better invested in coal-fired power plants, or oil-fired plants, and the blame can be squarely laid at the feet of Michael Mann, or the UN’s IPCC, or Al Gore, or Rachel Carson, or John Muir, or Aeolus — or anyone other than the real trouble, the freakish weather.  Avoiding blame on the weather is important to denialists, because such “perfect storm” combinations come astonishingly close to the predictions of some global warming hypotheses.

So blame must be established, far from the house of warming denialists if possible.  Watts’ blog attacked windpower all through 2010; ignoring any rebuttals, all Watts had to do was point to his earlier published articles.

Days later the facts come out, as revealed in a lengthy investigative story published this morning in the Dallas Morning News with this lead:

The operators of Texas’ electricity grid blamed myriad problems at power plants across Texas for last week’s rolling blackouts.  But interviews and a review of documents by The Dallas Morning News reveal that the breakdown of a cluster of coal-fired power plants in Central Texas was at the heart of the problem.

These facts were known days ago.  In fact the second comment at Watts’ blog corrected the record:

Walt Stone says:

February 2, 2011 at 8:39 pm

I believe it was two power plants, one coal and one gas fired.

http://fuelfix.com/blog/2011/02/02/whats-behind-the-blackouts-power-plants-not-designed-for-cold-weather/

Could Watts ever concede a possible error?  Not yet, not on his blog, nor anywhere else.  Texas electric grid officials said early they had coal-fired power plants down; they’ve stuck to that story.  Reporting by the state’s major newspapers and other news organizations has borne out that story.

• Austin American-Statesman:  “Lawmakers to investigate what caused power cutoffs”
• Texas Tribune: “An Interview with the CEO of the Texas Grid”
• Wall Street Journal: “Texas Shivers in Storm’s Wake”
• Reuters:  “Regulators look at why cold shut Texas power plants”
• Forbes blogger Christopher Hellman: “Rolling Blackouts Force Texas To Import Power From Mexico”
• Texas Tribune:  “The Rolling Chain of Events Behind Texas Blackouts” (This article quotes a state legislator saying he had heard that icing knocked out a significant portion of Texas wind generators, but it also contains a denial of that claim)
• KERA-FM (Dallas):  “Probe into Power Outages Will Look at Plant Readiness”

Continuing their leading reporting on energy and environment issues, the Texas Tribune, an on-line publication by a non-profit group, specifically asked about wind power shortages as alleged by Watts:

TT: Were there problems with wind-power plants needing to be shut down for high winds or icing blades, and also did nuclear plants have any problems?

[Trip] Doggett [CEO of the Electricity Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT)]: I’m not aware of any nuclear plant problems, and I’m not aware of any specific issues with wind turbines having to shut down due to icing. I would highlight that we put out a special word of thanks to the wind community because they did contribute significantly through this time frame. Wind was blowing, and we had often 3,500 megawatts of wind generation during that morning peak, which certainly helped us in this situation.

Is there any room for the wind nay-sayers to squirm on this?

One publication which should be keyed into the facts poked fun at Watts’ hypothesis, although in a subtle, implicit fashion.  Energy Tribune’s story by Philip E. Lewis, comparing Texas to King Canute, noted that Texas has bragged about its energy reliability and separateness from the rest of the state.  What to do in the next energy crisis?

But no worries, I have the perfect solution: Next time power plants are “tripping,” ERCOT (irony alert: Electric Reliability Council of Texas) should issue an order for the wind to blow harder in West Texas. If the wind is reluctant to comply, ERCOT should brook no nonsense and immediately escalate. Surely an order from the governor’s office will do the trick.

Based on little more than antipathy towards wind power, bloggers beginning with Anthony Watts started a hoax rumor that wind power is to blame for Texas’s electricity shortage problems.  Very little  basis could be found for such a claim, and in the days since the events, that little basis is evaporating.  It’s time to put that claim to bed.

Sorta post script:  I am aware of the claims at Meteorological Musings that wind generation is, somehow, to blame — if for no other reason than that it could not play Superman and bring a few thousand megawatts online with no notice to save the rest of the grid.  As best I can cipher it, the claim is that because not every wind generator was on line, wind generators should have been able to take up the slack.  Of course, no other energy source could step in to take up the slack, either, including those who were scheduled to do it.  I don’t put a lot of stock in the claim that we need to be particularly stern with wind generating companies when other generating companies fall down on the job.  For that matter, there is a Reuters article listed at Watts Up that said a wind shortage added to the problems, but it didn’t suggest in any way that a wind shortage caused the problems — and it’s from 2008, not 2011.  I don’t believe problems in 2008 contributed to blackouts in 2011.   I’m also aware that Energy Tribune is hostile to wind generated power.  Testimony contrary to interest . . .

More:

• Dallas Morning News map of power plants in Texas knocked off-line by the cold and during the cold emergency
• What is the Electricity Reliability Council of Texas?
• Texas power crisis timeline, from Dallas Morning News

Tip of the old scrub brush to a commenter named Bryan Brown.

Climate science cranks: Wrong in small things, wrong in all things?

Earlier we discussed the political jabs lacking scientific merit at the blogs that have sprung up to harry and heckle climate scientists, especially a relatively new one called, inaptly, “haunting the library.”

The author and commenters have taken to calling Dr. James Hansen “Beijing Jim,” thinking it a cleverly insulting nickname.

What?

Portrait of James Hansen for James Hansen, at Americans Who Tell the Truth.org

I almost regret asking.  Why “Beijing Jim?”

They started it when Hansen wrote an opposite-editorial page piece for the South China Post, urging China to act against global warming anyway, despite the U.S.’s failure to take aggressive-enough action yet.

haunting the library tries to spin the piece as Hansen moving over to China’s side in all issues, a position they seem to think is somehow unpatriotic (and therefore, insulting to Hansen).

Actually, in the article, Hansen doesn’t let China off the hook at all.  It’s a patient, well-aimed call to China to do the right things.  Only by misreporting and misrepresenting what Hansen said can climate science cranks spin it.

James Hansen takes the honorable high road, calling on the world’s most-polluting nations to take action now to save our children’s and grandchildren’s future.  haunting the library issues schoolyard, childish and churlish taunts.

Oh, but Dear Reader, you’re already guessing at the particular intellectual clumsiness I’m getting to, aren’t you?  It’s about that taunting name, “Beijing Jim.”  It’s unfair and undeserved because Hansen represented America well, and honorably.  “Free Enterprise Jim” would be closer to the facts.

It’s also geographically wrong.  South China Morning Post is a Hong Kong newspaper, not Beijing.  Hong Kong is the Chinese outpost of rampant free enterprise, as you know and the rest of the world knows.  Hong Kong is not Beijing.

The climate science cranks at haunting the library don’t know climate science, don’t know newspaper publishing, and flail at geography, too. They’re cranky, too.  Cranky cranks.  Poetic, almost.

More:

• Hansen’s follow-up at his website, part 1 (part 2 not available yet); Hansen’s website
• Jonah Goldberg at National Review Online plays nasty, and wrong

_____________

January 24, 2011:  Others are watching, too.  Tim Lambert at Deltoid makes gentle correction of an Andrew Bolt column relying on misinformation from hauntingthelibrary.  Good discussion there.

But the Earth still warms

Political activists who oppose working to stop or slow greenhouse gas emissions in order to slow global warming find themselves in awkward positions recently.

Before, during and after the Copenhagen meeting in December 2009 they predicted that warming had stopped, and that we are entering a period of global cooling.  Alas for their claim, the planet refuses to cool.  The decade ending in 2009 was the warmest in human history; 2010 itself turned out to be one of the warmest years in history, worldwide.

NOAA graphic: Indicators of global warming: "Seven of these indicators would be expected to increase in a warming world, and observations show that they are, in fact, increasing. Three would be expected to decrease and they are, in fact, decreasing."

Somebody stole hundreds of e-mails from one of the climate research clusters in England, and the anti-action activists claimed that the messages would reveal wrong-doing on the part of scientists, perhaps even criminal action.  Instead, five separate investigations discovered no wrong-doing on the parts of scientists, but a lot of hard work gone for too little action because of the anti-science shenanigans of the anti-action crew.  The science showing global warming remains untouched, with no significant body of research showing contrary.

One of the loudest voices against claims of global warming, Christopher Monckton, was unmasked as a blowhard and a fraud.    Scientists organized to refute the hoax claims of the anti-action activists.

So, the anti-action activists are sore.  They don’t take criticism well, and they especially don’t like anyone who points out their errors.

Sadly, they didn’t learn from the their past hoaxes.  So if even a lowly high school teacher should point out an error of history, they resort to making false claims and censorship against the teacher.  They have no data to back their case, nothing but invective to rebut with.

And so it was that a rather new site, hauntingthelibrary, took my comment noting where they could find the data to disabuse their wild claims, stripped it out, and substituted words I did not and would not write.

Fraud again, this time from hauntingthelibrary.  Hoax.  Fraud even in small things.

The movement against the science of global warming is rotten to its core.  (Seriously — most sites would be happy to note the pingback from this blog; the blogger had to act to block the pingback from showing up.  What are they so afraid of?)

Legend says that Galileo, backing out of the audience with the Pope in which he was put under house arrest after having “recanted” any claim that the Earth orbits the Sun, said quietly, “Still, it moves.”  Even the Pope’s powers through the Inquisition could not stop the Earth orbiting the Sun.  No matter how powerful the denial propaganda machines, no matter how many anti-science bloggers they recruit, the Earth keeps on stubbornly warming up.

_____________

Update: Then there is Anti-Gore Effect Sillies Syndrome — claiming Gore erred, when he didn’t.  It’s demonstrated with the infection fully affecting the judgment of its victims at this odd place, XD Talk Forums.

More:

• hauntingthelibrary resorted to a variation of the “Al Gore is Fat” fallacy, claiming that a turn for the better in the pestilence of bark beetles, in a small area of British Columbia, means that Gore was wrong when he properly cited the two-decades of damage from the insects as evidence of the sorts of problems global warming can cause.  In short, bark beetle infestations devastate forests; cold winters have traditionally limited bark beetle populations and damage; winters with too few days below freezing allowed and maybe encouraged an explosion in the bark beetle populations, and enabled their spread across North America to previously untouched forests, where they destroy vast tracts of forest.  In British Columbia, the beetles appear to have eaten all the thick-barked pine trees, and so they are dying because the thin-barked, younger pine trees they must now infest do not protect them as well from the cold, though the cold isn’t as cold as it used to be.  It’s a minor victory for trees and humanity against the bark beetle infestation.  hauntingthelibrary claims this minor victory means Gore predicted erroneously.  Of course, Gore’s prediction was made over a decade ago, and he’s been more than right for the past ten years — a one year contrary data point is not a trend.  Check it out for yourself, though — don’t take my word, unverified.
• A good summary of the problem, and the science, from Global Warming Science;  notice that this site mentions the B.C. beetle population decline in an article from two years ago, quoting officials saying the decline of the beetle is good news, except that it comes only because they’ve already destroyed almost all of the trees they can — they ate themselves out of habitat
• Congressional Research Service Reports article discussing the damage from beetles to lodgepole pine, increased by global warming; CRS is one of the most expert and least biased sources possible
• See the section on pine beetles in this CRS Report, “Global Climate Change and Wildlife”
• This March 2010 CRS report explains how deforestation, such as the beetle infestation causes, contributes to global warming
• “Pine Bark Beetles,” G. Keith Douce, Professor of Entomology, The University of Georgia, for BarkBeetles.org
• Newsday, “Beetles, wildfire:  Double threat in warming World,” August 19, 2009
• High Country News explained the science denied by hauntingthelibrary, in 2004
• Information on how much more serious are the warming-aided beetle outbreaks, from the U.S. Forest Service;  notice this 2008 article puts the beginning of this crisis at about 1990, meaning, were Gore wrong now as the ghostbookshelver claims, Gore was right the previous 19 years.  95% accuracy, to denialists
• Brunelle, A., Rehfeldt, G.E., Bentz, B., Munson, A.S. 2008. Holocene records of Dendroctonus bark beetles in high elevation pine forests of Idaho and Montana, USA. Forest Ecology and Management 255(3-4):836–846. (Article notes that swiftness of climate change appears to aggravate pine bark beetle epidemics, and the current rate of climate change is very swift.)  (More publications on pine bark beetle research from Utah State University, mostly with links to the publications)
• If the infestation in British Columbia is in decline, that appears to be the only place it is; NPR story on devastation in Colorado, December 2010; “How a tiny beetle could devastate Yellowstone“
• Beetles pose threat to forests of Arizona, 2011 story from Channel 15, Phoenix
• Infested Torrey pine cut down in San Diego
• CBC story on the crash of beetles in B.C., noting that they ate themselves “out of house and home”
• Story from the Boulder Daily Camera from January 14, four days ago — beetles still epidemic in Colorado
• The Missoulian, January 5, 2011 — not cold enough in Western Montana to end beetle epidemic there
• Toronto Globe & Mail, January 4, 2011 — Alberta, learning from the disaster in B.C. (20,000 jobs lost), is spending $250 million to try to avoid the severest damage; apparently, beetles are not in decline in Alberta

Earlier at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub:

• “Global cooling?  That would be good news for the forests”
  

Photo by W. W. MacFarlane - NPR caption: "Many dead trees appear gray and red on the high-mountain slopes of Union Pass Bridger in Teton National Forest in Wyoming"

Lens incompetence: Watts Up looks through the wrong end of the telescope

The wags and denialists over at Anthony Watts’ joint are up to their old tricks, accusing others of their own errors.  Today it’s a guest post by Bernie Lewin, in which he claims that climate warming was all psychological, a “scare”:

Yet we can find precedents to this science-base scare in many health scares of recent decades, and also in environmental scares since the DDT cancer scare triggered by Silent Spring, politicised by the EDF and legalized by the newly formed EPA. (See Scared to Death which finds a repeating pattern to these science-based scares.)

This woman might be corrected; global warming denialists will staunchly insist she knows what she's doing and doesn't need YOUR advice.

He fails to even think that Rachel Carson was right.  Lewin demonstrates incompetence at history, law and science, and the first point of the Scout Law, all in one sentence.

So much error.  So little time to correct.

1. Carson didn’t claim DDT caused cancer. She noted that we create thousands of chemicals that may cause cancer, that cancers were rising in frequency, and that there was no testing of the new substances prior to their marketing.   Was there a DDT/cancer scare?  Lewin doesn’t offer any evidence.  (We had to correct Matt Ridley on this a couple of weeks ago – see his post here.)
2. EDF (Environmental Defense Fund, now known as Environmental Defense) was on DDT without Carson — suing to stop DDT spraying (for no good reason) on Long Island in 1968.  EDF relied on science that was courtroom ready.  (I had misremembered the year of EDF’s suit in an earlier version of this post; my apologies to the two or three who may have read it.)  EDF’s suits established, on the basis of science, that DDT is an uncontrollable poison in the wild.  Lewin ignores science and law in his off-hand indictment of Carson’s book and ED.
3. EPA didn’t act against DDT until 1972.  EPA banned DDT use on agricultural crops in the U.S. because DDT kills non-target species and, basically, entire ecosystems.  EPA was specific:  The ban had nothing to do with cancer.  Once again, Lewin ignores history, science and law.

So, in Lewin’s guest post, we see the pattern that continues at Watts’s place — unfair and wrong indictments of science, ignorance of history, little understanding of law.

All while trying to mock scientists:  ‘Of course scientists are almost always wrong,’ Watts’s blog argues, once again.

Watts won’t let me correct his errors there, even though he’s still coddling those who misdescribe Rachel Carson as a mass murderer, while denying he does it himself.  Consequently his readers won’t be alerted to this post because Watts or his minions will edit out the automatic ping his blog gets that this post is here.  Propaganda promoting falsehood can’t stand the sunlight of fact and truth.

Just because there’s a scare doesn’t mean there’s not a reason to be scared.  DDT is a deadly toxin, so long-lived that it almost cannot ever be eradicated from the environment.  It kills everything small, quickly, unless so much of it is used that the small things evolve quickly to be resistant and immune to it.

So, if we are to assume, as Lewin wrote, that the anti-warming bunch is to warming what the campaign against Rachel Carson by the DDT manufacturers was to DDT’s harms, we get a hint of what’s really up at Watts Up:  Any anti-warming claim is a hoax.  Why put it so cryptically, if that’s what they meant to say?

When Lewin looks at the history of DDT and Rachel Carson, he’s looking at the false history, and he draws the wrong conclusions.  Should we trust a guy so sloppy with the facts to be right on anything else?

EPA at 40: Director Jackson claims too much?

EPA turned 40 on December 2.* EPA Director Lisa Jackson somehow wangled a few inches from the Wall Street Journal’s opinion page to extol the virtues of the agency.

She’s come under fire from some quarters, including especially the Home for Unwed Crabs,  for overstating the case.  Did she?

EPA Director Lisa P. Jackson

Or is this one more case of using environmentalists as scapegoats by the hard right, and other know-nothings and know-not-enoughs?

Jackson’s piece makes mild defense of a great idea in government, I think.  To me, the critics appear hysterical in comparison.

In tracking this down, I discovered that Matt Ridley had been given some really bum information about Rachel Carson, DDT and malaria, which appears in his new book, The Rational Optimist. To his credit, Ridley made a quick correction of the grossest distortions.  He defends the premises, still, however, which I find troubling. There may be subject for a later comment.

Disinformation is insidious.  Claims against the accuracy and reputation of Rachel Carson follow the stories of Millard Fillmore’s bathtub, but with darker, malignant intent.

Seriously:  What does Lisa Jackson overstate here?

The EPA Turns 40

‘Job-killing’ environmental standards help employ more than 1.5 million people.

Forty years ago today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency opened its doors, beginning a history of improvements to our health and environment. We reach this milestone exactly one month after the midterm elections strengthened the influence of groups and individuals who threaten to roll back the EPA’s efforts.

Last month’s elections were not a vote for dirtier air or more pollution in our water. No one was sent to Congress with a mandate to increase health threats to our children or return us to the era before the EPA’s existence when, for example, nearly every meal in America contained elements of pesticides linked to nerve damage, cancer and sometimes death. In Los Angeles, smog-thick air was a daily fact of life, while in New York 21,000 tons of toxic waste awaited discovery beneath the small community of Love Canal. Six months before the EPA’s creation, flames erupted from pollution coating the surface of Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River, nearly reaching high enough to destroy two rail bridges.

These are issues that are above politics. The last 40 years have seen hard-won advances supported by both sides of the aisle, and today the EPA plays an essential role in our everyday lives. When you turn on the shower or make a cup of coffee, the water you use is protected from industrial pollution and untreated sewage. In fact, drinking water in Cleveland was recently shown to be cleaner than a premium brand of bottled water. You can drive your car or catch a bus without breathing dangerous lead pollution. At lunch, would you prefer your food with more, or less, protection from pesticides?

The most common arguments against these protections are economic, especially as we continue to recover from the worst downturn since the Great Depression. Fortunately, the last 40 years show no evidence that environmental protection hinders economic growth. Neither the recent crisis nor any other period of economic turmoil was caused by environmental protection. In fact, a clean environment strengthens our economy.

Special interests have spent millions of dollars making the case that we must choose the economy or the environment, attacking everything from removing lead in gasoline to cleaning up acid rain. They have consistently exaggerated the cost and scope of EPA actions, and in 40 years their predictions have not come true.

We have seen GDP grow by 207% since 1970, and America remains the proud home of storied companies that continue to create opportunities. Instead of cutting productivity, we’ve cut pollution while the number of American cars, buildings and power plants has increased. Alleged “job-killing” regulations have, according to the Commerce Department, sparked a homegrown environmental protection industry that employs more than 1.5 million Americans.

Even in these challenging times, the EPA has been part of the solution, using Recovery Act investments in water infrastructure, clean-diesel innovation and other projects to create jobs and prepare communities for more growth in the years ahead.

The EPA’s efforts thrive on American ingenuity and entrepreneurship. Holding polluters accountable sparks innovations like the Engelhard Corporation’s catalytic converter, which pioneered the reduction of toxic emissions from internal combustion engines, and DuPont’s replacements for chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which protected the ozone layer while turning a profit for the company. One executive told me that the EPA’s recent standards for greenhouse gas emissions from cars will help create hundreds of jobs in a state where his company operates—a state whose U.S. senators have both opposed the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases.

These attacks are aimed at the EPA, but their impacts are felt by all Americans. Pollutants like mercury, smog and soot are neurotoxins and killers that cause developmental problems and asthma in kids, and heart attacks in adults. We will not strengthen our economy by exposing our communities and our workers to more pollution.

In these politically charged times, we urge Congress and the American people to focus on results from common-sense policies, not inaccurate doomsday speculations. That is how we can confront our nation’s economic and environmental challenges and lay a foundation for the next 40 years and beyond.

Ms. Jackson is administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

* [Oops. Same birthday as Donna. Happy birthday, Donna! Happy EPA's 40th (yours, too? can't be much more, can it?)]

DDT hoaxsters predictably spinning India/malaria deaths story — wrongly

People so wedded to a hoax, or just wrong, view of events cannot be swayed away from their convictions easily.

Elizabeth Whelan’s hoax science policy group, the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH), put out a press release taking note of the study published in Lancet that calls into question the count of malaria deaths in India promulgated by the World Health Organization (WHO).  You remember, the study suggests the malaria death toll among adults in India may be as high as 200,000 annually, compared to the 15,000 estimated by WHO.

ACSH can’t resist the spin.  Implicit the debunking may be, but the study thoroughly debunks ACSH’s claim that more DDT will help defeat malaria.  India is the world’s greatest user of DDT, using more than all the rest of the world together.  Clearly a surplus usage of DDT has not created the miracle end to malaria that ACSH and other hoaxsters claim it would.

Still, ACSH sticks to their views, even when those views are grossly wrong.  ACSH said, “ACSH has called for resumed use of indoor residual spraying of small amounts of DDT to prevent mosquito bites, repel mosquitoes, and reduce malaria deaths.”

No word from India on whether it will dramatically reduce DDT use to meet ACSH’s call for “small amounts.”

ACSH’s press release calls attention to a Wall Street Journal Blog article describing WHO’s response to the Lancet-published study of India malaria deaths — WHO questions the “verbal autopsy” methodology, and says it stands by its estimates of malaria deaths in the nation:

“The new study uses verbal autopsy method which is suitable only for diseases with distinctive symptoms and not for malaria,” WHO’s India representative Nata Menabde said in an email statement Thursday.

The WHO says it takes into account only confirmed cases of malaria and surveys those using healthcare facilities.

Malaria symptoms include fever, flu-like illness and muscle aches. Malaria is endemic to parts of India, where many people live in mosquito-infested areas. Confirming the presence of malaria requires tests like the “Peripheral Smear for Malarial Parasite” and “Rapid Malaria Antigen”.

Lancet said the determinations made by its field researchers were reviewed by two of 130 trained doctors for all the 6,671 districts who determined whether or not the person had died from malaria.

The data concluded that 205,000 deaths before the age of 70, mainly in rural areas, were caused by malaria each year – 55,000 in early childhood, 30,000 among children ages five to 14 and 120,000 people 15 and older.

The WHO called for further review of the study.

“Malaria has symptoms common with many other diseases and cannot be correctly identified by the local population,” Dr. Menabde said, adding: “The findings of the study cannot be accepted without further validation.”

http://download.thelancet.com/flatcontentassets/pdfs/PIIS0140673610608318.pdf

Quote of the moment: Lewis Carroll on Republican politics, climate skeptics, DDT advocates and creationism

Alice and the Red Queen - illustration by Sir John Tenniel

Alice laughed: “There’s no use trying,” she said; “one can’t believe impossible things.”

“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, writing under the name Lewis Carroll,
Alice in Wonderland, 1866

[Yes, the illustration is from Through the Looking Glass, 1871]

Warming deniers surprised by winter

Were you writing fiction, you couldn’t make this stuff up.

Another bastion of people misled by the lack of a Hemingway-brand Solid Gold Sh*t Detector™.

Another person proud as heck of her denial of global warming, points to cattle freezing in South America in July as proof that the Earth’s atmosphere is not warming.

At a blog called Frugal Café Blog Zone, “Where it’s chic to be cheap… Conservative social & political commentary, with frugality mixed in,” blogger Vicki McClure Davidson headlined the piece:

“Remember Al Gore’s “Global Warming” Hoax? People & Cattle in South America Are Dying from Extreme Cold in July”

Gee, how to break this news to her?

Vickie, sit down.  This is something you should have learned in geography in junior high:  In the Southern Hemisphere, winter starts on June 21.  It’s cold in South America in July, because it’s winter in South America in July.

Cold in winter.  They don’t expect it.  These warming denialists provide the evidence those crabs need, who wonder whether there shouldn’t be some sort of “common sense test” required to pass before allowing people to vote, or drive, or have children.

Oh, it gets worse:

Another site picked up the post.  No, seriously.  (Has Anthony Watts seen this yet?)

• Voting Female [I am convinced that is a sock puppet site designed to insult women; no woman could be that stupid, could she?]

Earth at northern solstice - Wikimedia image

Skeptics noise broad; no deep effects on American opinions

A commenter with the handle Klem complained about my outlook on global warming issues, in a recent post about the desperation I see in the warming denialist world.  Klem finds my views not pessimistic enough:

Those purloined emails have ultimately destroyed the IPCC, it has no credibility with the public anymore. You seem like a smart guy but I can’t believe after this amount of time you still don’t understand this. And you say it’s the anti-warming camp which is desperate? Oops I think you’re in denial.

I’ve been involved in environmental issues since well before the first Earth Day.  Lack of understanding among the public at large is a constant issue, and not a recent development.  Lack of support for a clean environment rarely is an issue, however.  The old progressive era push for clean water, clean air, outdoor activities, and healthy living, continues probably stronger today than ever before.  No one defends smoking stacks as symbols of progress anymore.

Even petroleum companies spend millions in advertising to tout their “green” tendencies.  Big Oil doesn’t spend money like that if they don’t have clear indicators that it’s effective.

One indication of how deep is the desire for environmental protection is the mini-movement chronicled and maybe led by conservative writer Rod Dreher, known as “crunchy conservatism.” Dreher wrote about conservatives who, from most outward appearances — Birkenstock sandals, organic-food heavy diets, environmentally-friendly yards and homes — might be considered lefty environmentalists, but who adhere to conservative social and economic policies, and the Republican party (yes:  educated people who vote against their own best interests; go figure).

No matter how odd their views on economics, no matter how odd their views on their fellow humans, they recognize the basic benefits of the progressive movement on their own lives, and they would like to conserve those benefits.

Have the so-called skeptics changed those trends?  Did the stealing of e-mails convince most Americans that scientists are evil, conniving, and wrong?

Rather than take the denialists’ methods, the famous MSU technique*, how about we actually ask people what they think?

Recent polls with some depth on environmental issues show most Americans to be quite  level-headed about warming and other environment issues, and not so subject to the hot winds of talk-without-fact from Fox News, the Heartland Institute, or other paragons of science denialism.

Most Americans remain concerned about global warming

Pay attention to reality for a moment; the headline on the press release is, “Large majority of Americans still believe in global warming, Stanford poll finds”:

Three out of four Americans believe that the Earth has been gradually warming as the result of human activity and want the government to institute regulations to stop it, according to a new survey by researchers at the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University.

The survey was conducted by Woods Institute Senior Fellow Jon Krosnick, a professor of communication and of political science at Stanford, with funding from the National Science Foundation. The results are based on telephone interviews conducted from June 1-7 with 1,000 randomly selected American adults.

“Several national surveys released during the last eight months have been interpreted as showing that fewer and fewer Americans believe that climate change is real, human-caused and threatening to people,” Krosnick said. “But our new survey shows just the opposite.”

For example, when respondents in the June 2010 survey were asked if the Earth’s temperature probably had been heating up over the last 100 years, 74 percent said yes. And 75 percent said that human behavior was substantially responsible for any warming that has occurred. Krosnick has asked similar questions in previous Woods Institute polls since 2006.

“Our surveys reveal a small decline in the proportion of people who believe global warming has been happening, from 84 percent in 2007 to 74 percent today,” Krosnick said. “Statistical analysis of our data revealed that this decline is attributable to perceptions of recent weather changes by the minority of Americans who have been skeptical about climate scientists.”

In terms of average Earth temperature, 2008 was the coldest year since 2000, Krosnick said. “Scientists say that such year-to-year fluctuations are uninformative, and people who trust scientists therefore ignore this information when forming opinions about global warming’s existence,” he added. “But people who do not trust climate scientists base their conclusions on their personal observations of nature. These ‘low-trust’ individuals were especially aware of the recent decline in average world temperatures; they were the ones in our survey whose doubts about global warming have increased since 2007.”

According to Krosnick, this explanation is especially significant, because it suggests that the recent decline in the proportion of people who believe in global warming is likely to be temporary. “If the Earth’s temperature begins to rise again, these individuals may reverse course and rejoin the large majority who still think warming is real,” he said.

Ah, the Fickle Public — it appears only a small fraction of the public is fickle, after all.  Shifts in public opinion on the reality of warming were driven by weather, not weather men.

The poll also specifically addressed the effect of the computer break-in that exposed a few thousand e-mail messages from climate scientists under attack by anti-green critics:

‘Climategate’

“Overall, we found no decline in Americans’ trust in environmental scientists,” Krosnick said. “Fully 71 percent of respondents said they trust scientists a moderate amount, a lot or completely.”

Several questions in the June survey addressed the so-called “climategate” controversy, which made headlines in late 2009 and early 2010.

“Growing public skepticism has, in recent months, been attributed to news reports about e-mail messages hacked from the computer system at the University of East Anglia in Britain – characterized as showing climate scientists colluding to silence unconvinced colleagues – and by the discoveries of alleged flaws in reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC),” Krosnick said. “Our survey discredited this claim in multiple ways. “

For example, only 9 percent of respondents said they knew about the East Anglia e-mail messages and believed they indicate that climate scientists should not be trusted, and only 13 percent said the same about the controversial IPPC reports.

That may explain why Anthony Watts’ logo for his Australian tour shows a kangaroo whose rear end has just been kicked (you can tell by the stars).

In cartoons, stars show where a character has been punched or kicked, right?

No agreement to control greenhouse gases came out of the Copenhagen conference last fall.  So-called climate skeptics patted each other on the back, claimed victory, and proceeded to send Christopher Monckton on his Bonnie Lies All Around the World Tour.  In cool light of morning, however, the facts can’t be silenced:  Warming continues, science shows the extremely high probability that humans cause it, official investigations show that climate scientists who had their e-mails stolen were victims of crime, not perpetrators, and climate skeptics failed to stop warming with their big-dollar, nice-banquet meetings with the Heartland Institute, or anywhere else.

If they are skeptics, they are pretty bad at it, falling like chumps for a story that fourth-grade science project made the case they have failed to make everywhere else, and for the story that one of their comrades was sent a bomb in the mail (it turned out to be a misdirected fuel filter).

No wonder Americans remain concerned about warming.

_____________

* Make S[tuff] Up

More, resources:

• Jon Krosnick’s page on public opinion at the Woods Institute for the Environment, featuring polling data over the past few years

Astounding lightning strike photo — Chicago Tribune readers show proper skepticism

Amazing photo of two Chicago buildings struck by lightning simultaneously, by Chicago Tribune photog  Chris Sweda:

Dual lightning strike in Chicago, June 2010 - photo by Chris Sweda, Chicago Tribune

Among other things, the photo isn’t perfect enough to suggest post-shutter-snap manipulation — you can see from other photos that the rain drops on the window disappear with a focus farther away.

Blair Kamin writing at Cityscapes discussed skepticism from readers of the Chicago Tribune about whether the strikes were really simultaneous, or instead the result of a very long exposure.

Exactly the sort of skepticism anti-warmists should have exhibited when confronted with the story of a fourth-grade student in Beeville, Texas, disproving global warming, or the story of a Spanish solar energy company sending a bomb by courier to an anti-warmist, and then bragging about it.

Kamin offers a couple of paths by which a reasonable person can determine it was a chance photo, the photographer pushing the shutter release coincidentally with a double lightning strike (see the “postscripts” section of Kamin’s post).

Were they true to their warming science, in the anti-warmist world two camps would be forming.  One camp would argue the photograph was manipulated, a clever collage of two different photos, or maybe a clever use of miniatures; the other camp would argue that lightning doesn’t strike man-made objects.

Spanish warming skeptic claims a bomb in the mail; so-called skeptics caught unskeptical

This is a story of a hoax.  It may not be an intentional hoax — some of the alleged victims here are victims of their own gullibility –  but it’s a hoax all the same.  In large part, this is how lynch mobs form and operate:

News reports come out of Spain that a guy said he got a bomb in the mail.  No corroboration from the cops, no corroboration from anyone else.  Moreover, they guy who got the bomb accuses his rivals in his work with sending it to him.

Smell a rat?  It’s a bit of a preposterous story on its face — astounding if true, but who could be so stupid as to send a bomb to a rival with a return address, and then admit it?

Climate change so-called skeptics don’t smell a rat.  They’ve blown by the “wonder what the facts are” phase into the “let’s string the culprit up” phrase.

Let them tell the story:

Long time denier that warming occurs or is caused by humans Christopher Horner at Pajamas Media:

Spain’s Dr. Gabriel Calzada — the author of a damning study concluding that Spain’s “green jobs” energy program has been a catastrophic economic failure — was mailed a dismantled bomb on Tuesday by solar energy company Thermotechnic.

Says Calzada:

Before opening it, I called [Thermotechnic] to know what was inside … they answered, it was their answer to my energy pieces.

Dr. Calzada contacted a terrorism expert to handle the package. The expert first performed a scan of the package, then opened it in front of a journalist, Dr. Calzada, and a private security expert.

The terrorism consultant said he had seen this before:

This time you receive unconnected pieces. Next time it can explode in your hands.

Ignore that noise in the background that sounds like a vuvuzela amplified — that’s my Hemingway solid-gold shit detector going off. Or, if you’re a normal human, it may be yours. I’m resetting mine — just a minute.

There. Now let’s think about this: A guy gets a package in the mail. First thing he does is call the sender to see what it is. They tell him it’s a report. So, then he calls his terrorism expert buddy who happens to be close by, and that guy tells him it’s really a dismantled bomb.

How many scientists do you know who do that?

Just a minute, gotta reset the Hemingway again.

So, this is reported not by the major news agencies, but by partisans in the debate — in this case, people who claim that green jobs can’t work, that alternative energy programs are worthless (but please don’t notice the requirement to sacrifice Louisiana to the Blob oil spills). And in the reporting, the culprit admits his felonious actions.

You know, this is not a scenario you could sell to the producers of “Transformers.”

I read it at Watts’s blog first. Over there, they mention the story was published in a Spanish publication, so we’ll have a source to consult. But look at how it’s reported.  Any journalistic “wonder what the other side says?”  Any common sense “wonder if it’s accurate?”

The headline:

Green Energy Company Threatens Economics Professor … with Package of Dismantled Bomb Parts

The story — quoted from Horner (and posted by Charles the Moderator):

The author of a damning study about the failure of Spain’s “green jobs” program — a story broken here at PJM — received the threatening package on Tuesday from solar energy company Thermotechnic.

From Pajamas Media

June 24, 2010 - by Christopher Horner

Spain’s Dr. Gabriel Calzada — the author of a damning study concluding that Spain’s “green jobs” energy program has been a catastrophic economic failure — was mailed a dismantled bomb on Tuesday by solar energy company Thermotechnic.

Says Calzada:

Before opening it, I called [Thermotechnic] to know what was inside … they answered, it was their answer to my energy pieces.

Dr. Calzada contacted a terrorism expert to handle the package. The expert first performed a scan of the package, then opened it in front of a journalist, Dr. Calzada, and a private security expert.

The terrorism consultant said he had seen this before:

This time you receive unconnected pieces. Next time it can explode in your hands.

Dr. Calzada added:

[The terrorism expert] told me that this was a warning.

The bomb threat is just the latest intimidation Dr. Calzada has faced since releasing his report and following up with articles in Expansion (a Spanish paper similar to the Financial Times). A minister from Spain’s Socialist government called the rector of King Juan Carlos University — Dr. Calzada’s employer — seeking Calzada’s ouster. Calzada was not fired, but he was stripped of half of his classes at the university. The school then dropped its accreditation of a summer university program with which Calzada’s think tank — Instituto Juan de Mariana — was associated.

Additionally, the head of Spain’s renewable energy association and the head of its communist trade union wrote opinion pieces in top Spanish newspapers accusing Calzada of being “unpatriotic” — they did not charge him with being incorrect, but of undermining Spain by daring to write the report.

Their reasoning? If the skepticism that Calzada’s revelations prompted were to prevail in the U.S., Spanish industry would face collapse should U.S. subsidies and mandates dry up.

As I have previously reported at PJM (here and here), Spain’s “green jobs” program was repeatedly referenced by President Obama as a model for what he would like to implement in the United States. Following the release of Calzada’s report, Spain’s Socialist government has since acknowledged the debacle — both privately and publicly. This month, Spain’s government instituted massive reductions in subsidies to “renewable” energy sources.

Read the rest of the story here:

On the basis of that report, a skeptic should be saying, “that’s almost unbelievable — where are more facts?” A mob would take it at face value.

How do the readers of WUWT respond?

Comment 1:

The judge who stopped the moratorium has received threats. Zerohedge has an article about Soros.

Comment 2 (from a reader handled “The Monster”):

There is really no other way to look at the situation. The AGW industry has become an organized crime syndicate.

Calzada messed with the Family, and if he keeps it up, he gets to swim wit’ da fishes. Capice?

Comment 3:

And then they wonder why scientist not swallowing the AGW scam are not coming out in the light… those are still dangerous times to speak out, it seams.

Comment 4 — just a minute, I have to reset the Hemingway again — okay:

Blacklists,bombthreats,these are acts of terror and not a peep from MSM !!

You get the idea.  You have to get to comments 10, 11 and 12 before we find anyone with a functioning Hemingway:

Comment 10:

I can’t imagine why the company would put their return address on this present. Seems pretty stupid to me.

Comment 11:

Does nobody see something odd about the claim that a regular commercial firm is sending out simulated bombs in packages under its own name?

This article (on the opinion page, for which Dr Calzada writes) mentions a simulated bomb in the imaginative headline. But the text says it was a fuel (gasoil) filter with a cable. The firm Termotechnics had intended to send a different item.

No mention of police, only Dr Calzada’s own “bomb expert”.

Comment 12:

Missing something. Why were the police not called? Why were anti-terrorist officials not involved? Spain’s no stranger to domestic terrorism, so I don’t understand why this was handled “privately” and wasn’t handled through “official” channels. Maybe there’s a good and rational explanation, and if anyone has one I’d be grateful to understand it.

At this point, we don’t know much; what we have is at best third hand, translated from Spanish.  A skeptic should be wondering, “what’s going on here.”  Those who most patently wear the self-moniker “skeptic” don’t appear, to me, to be very skeptical.

Horner’s article mentions the Spanish newspaper Expansion, which, he says (and I know no better), is a publication much like Financial Times.

(Why is this article published in the opinion pages, if it’s news?  Drat!  There goes the Hemingway again.)

Let’s go see what it says, shall we?

Here’s the article from Expansion, translated with Google’s translator (interesting — Spanish followed by English translation, sentence by sentence):

Gabriel Calzada, EXPANSION regular contributor, was a simulated bomb sent by a photovoltaic company and sought to intimidate their critical articles about solar energy.El miércoles 16 de junio se recibió un paquete en el Instituto Juan de Mariana dirigido a su presidente, Gabriel Calzada. On Wednesday June 16 received a package in the Instituto Juan de Mariana addressed to its president, Gabriel Calzada. Nada le hacía pensar al destinatario que podía tratarse de una amenaza con forma de artefacto casero desmontado. Nothing made him think the recipient might be a threat in the form of explosive device dismantled. Pero como el envío no era esperado desde el think tank decidieron contactar con el remitente por vía telefónica. But as the shipment was not expected from the think tank decided to contact the sender by telephone. Al otro lado del hilo, señala Gabriel Calzada, una empleada de la empresa supo inmediatamente de qué paquete se trataba y contestó sin dudar un segundo que esa “es nuestra respuesta a los artículos sobre energía de Sr. Calzada en Expansión”. At the other end, said Gabriel Calzada, an employee of the company immediately known which package and said it was without doubt a second that this “is our response to the articles on Mr. Calzada energy expansion.”

La forma cuadrada del paquete no hacía pensar de que pudiera tratarse de un documento por lo que Gabriel Calzada, tras consultarlo con el abogado del Instituto, decidió pasarlo por un escáner antes de abrirlo. The square shape of the package did not think it could be a document that Gabriel Calzada, in consultation with counsel for the Institute, decided to pass it through a scanner before opening. El paquete estuvo cerrado hasta que el martes 22, día en que Calzada aprovechó su colaboración semanal como contertulio en el programa de César Vidal ‘Es la Noche de César’, de EsRadio, para pedirle a la empresa de seguridad si podían escanear el paquete. The package was closed until Tuesday 22, the day he used his weekly collaboration Calzada contertulio in the program as Cesar Vidal ‘Caesar’s Night’ by EsRadio, to ask the security company if they could scan the package.

El agente de seguridad privada recomendó no abrirlo tras comprobar que se trataba de dos objetos metálicos difíciles de interpretar. The private security officer advised not to open it after checking that there were two metal objects are difficult to interpret. Pidió ayuda a una persona con más experiencia quien tras un breve visionado de la pantalla del escáner creyó saber de qué se trataba y procedió a abrirlo con cuidado ante la atenta mirada del guarda de seguridad, Lorenzo Ramírez (antiguo redactor de Expansión) y el propio Gabriel Calzada. He hired a more experienced person who, after a brief viewing of the screen of the scanner thought he knew what it was and proceeded to open it carefully under the watchful eye of security guard, Lorenzo Ramirez (former editor of Expansion) and the actual Gabriel Calzada. De la caja salieron un filtro de gasoil y una pieza con rosca que podía adaptarse al filtro. In the box came a diesel filter thread and a piece that could be adapted to the filter.

“Los cuatro nos miramos y pensamos lo mismo”, comenta Gabriel Calzada, “se trataba de una amenaza que podía resumirse en que si seguía dando mi opinión sobre cuestiones energéticas en los medios, la próxima vez podía esperar que las piezas estuvieran ensambladas y me estallaran”. “The four of us and we look the same,” says Gabriel Calzada, “was a threat was summed up that if I kept giving my views on energy issues in media, the next time could be expected that the pieces were assembled and me exploded. “

El experto en seguridad confirmó lo que pensaban y les contó que no era la primera vez que veía algo así. The security expert confirmed what he thought and told them that was not the first time I saw something like that. Durante algunos años trabajó en el País Vasco dando protección personal a distintas personas y ya había asistido a este tipo de amenazas. For some years he worked in the Basque country giving personal protection to different people and I had attended this type of threat. “Ten cuidado Gabriel, esta vez lo mandan como aviso, la próxima vez te puedes encontrar con un paquete que estalle al abrirlo”. “Beware Gabriel, this time he is sent as a warning, next time you can find a package that explodes when opened.”

Gabriel Calzada dirigió una investigación sobre el coste del experimento renovable español a comienzos del año pasado. Gabriel Calzada conducted an investigation on the cost of renewable experiment Spanish at the beginning of last year. Calzada y su equipo concluyeron que en España nos encontrábamos ante una burbuja de energías renovables que estaba a punto de estallar, que los famosos empleos verdes que según el presidente Obama y el presidente Zapatero nos iban a sacar de la crisis, habían costado de media 570.000 euros y que en realidad por cada empleo verde creado había destruido 2,2 empleos en el resto de la economía. Calzada and his team concluded that in Spain we were dealing with a renewable energy bubble was burst, that the famous green jobs that according to President Obama and President Zapatero were going to get out of the crisis had cost on average 570 000 euros and in fact for every green job created had destroyed 2.2 jobs in the rest of the economy. Las conclusiones del estudio corrieron como la pólvora en EE.UU. The study’s conclusions ran like wildfire in the U.S. donde Calzada participó en algunos de los mayores programas de televisión de cadenas como CNN, FoxNews o Univisión después de que The Economist y Wall Street Journal dedicaran elogiosos editoriales al estudio. Calzada where he participated in some of the major television programs such as CNN, FoxNews or Univision after the Economist and the Wall Street Journal editorial praise devoted to the study.

A finales de mayo de 2009 Miguel Sebastián decidió ponerse al frente de un grupo de trabajo para dar respuesta, siempre indirecta, al estudio de Gabriel Calzada y su equipo ( ver expansión de 30 de mayo de 2009 ) In late May, 2009 Miguel Sebastian decided to take charge of a working group to respond, if indirectly, to the study of Gabriel Calzada and his team ( see expansion of May 30, 2009 )

En diversos medios comenzaron a aparecer falsas noticias que trataban de desprestigiar el estudio afirmando que había sido pagado por Exxon Mobil u otras multinacionales petroleras. In various media began to appear false information trying to discredit the study stating that he had been paid by Exxon Mobil and other oil multinationals. Dos meses después, el Diario Público dedicó un amplio reportaje al éxito del estudio en el que acusaba sin pruebas a Calzada de recibir fondos públicos en el Instituto Juan de Mariana (el Instituto es una de las pocas instituciones que tratan de avivar el debate político sin aceptar dinero público ni de partidos políticos), ser cercano a la Fundación FAES así como a su presidente José María Aznar y tratar de perjudicar a España y su industria. Two months later, the newspaper published an extensive article devoted to the success of the study in which he accused without proof Calzada receiving public funds at the Instituto Juan de Mariana (The Institute is one of the few institutions seeking to revive the political debate without accept public funds or political parties), being close to the FAES Foundation and its president José María Aznar and try to hurt Spain and its industry.

Sin embargo, la campaña de desprestigio, replicada en EEUU por la Fundación de George Soros, no fue tomada muy en serio y el congreso de los EEUU llamó a testificar a Gabriel Calzada seguido poco después por el Senado de ese mismo país que le solicitó la presentación de informes sobre las consecuencias económicas del modelo español de ayuda pública a las energías renovables. However, the campaign to discredit replicated in the U.S. by George Soros Foundation, was not taken very seriously and the U.S. Congress called to testify Gabriel Calzada followed shortly by the Senate in the same country that requested the reporting on the economic consequences of the Spanish model of public support for renewable energy.
Público. Public.

Desde entonces el gobierno español ha boicoteado en dos ocasiones la participación de Gabriel Calzada en foros internacionales. Since then the Spanish government has twice boycotted participation in international forums Gabriel Calzada. La primera ocasión fue el veto del gobierno a su participación en una cumbre hispano-estadounidense convocado por el Congreso estadounidense. The first occasion was the government veto their participation in a Hispanic-American summit convened by the U.S. Congress. Calzada recibió una carta pidiendo disculpas por el incidente por parte de la parte estadounidense. Calzada received a letter apologizing for the incident by the U.S. side. El segundo boicot tuvo lugar a comienzos de 2010 cuando Gabriel Calzada iba a debatir junto a un miembro del gobierno español, un representante de CC.OO. The second boycott took place in early 2010 when Gabriel Calzada would be discussed with a member of the Spanish government, a representative of CC.OO. y uno del la federación europea de sindicatos en un conferencia internacional celebrada en Roma y patrocinada por la Comisión Europea. and one of the European federation of unions in an international conference in Rome sponsored by the European Commission.

Los demás participantes comunicaron a la organización que dejarían de participar si no retiraban al Profesor Gabriel Calzada del programa. Other participants reported that the organization would cease to participate unless they withdrew to Professor Gabriel Calzada of the program. Sin embargo en esta ocasión la organización se negó a aceptar el chantaje y mantuvo a Calzada, motivo por el que a última hora cancelaron su participación los representantes del gobierno, CC.OO. But this time the organization refused to accept the blackmail and kept Calzada, why at the last minute canceled his participation of government representatives, CC.OO. y el sindicato europeo. and the European Union.

Tras más de un año de presión política sobre los autores del estudio, en abril de este año el Ministerio de Industria produjo un documento en el que reproducía y actualizaba varios de los argumentos expuestos en el estudio de Calzada y su equipo. After more than a year of political pressure on the authors of the study, in April this year the Ministry of Industry produced a paper which reproduced and updated several of the arguments in the study of Calzada and his team. El paquete amenazante llega justo cuando el Ministerio de Industria que dirige Miguel Sebastián trata de renegociar las subvenciones a las energías renovables. The threatening package comes as the Ministry of Industry Miguel Sebastián is directed to renegotiate subsidies for renewable energy. A pesar del intento de intimidación, Gabriel Calzada escribe de nuevo hoy en Expansión sobre las tarifas eléctricas. Despite the attempt at intimidation, Gabriel Calzada writes again today Expanding on electricity tariffs.

Okay, I’m turning the Hemingway off.  I can’t stand the constant noise.  But I’m not abandoning all skepticism.

Surely there is more to the story, no?

The story was repeated in Libertad Digital.  That publication had the good sense to do what every reporter ought to do — they called the firm alleged to have sent the alleged bomb. So there’s a second story.  There’s another half to the story.  The whole truth is more than has been reported by too many self-proclaimed skeptics.

Again using Google’s software translator, I found:

The company says solar has never wanted threaten Calzada

Thermotechnic, the solar company under whose forwards received a package  highly suspect Gabriel Calzada, completely denies any connection with this shipment. Pedro Gil, el propietario, lo achaca a un error de mensajería y asegura que siente el mal rato que ha pasado Calzada.  Gil Pedro, the owner, blames the error message and says he feels bad time that has passed Calzada.

DIGITAL FREEDOM Libertad Digital se ha puesto al habla con Pedro Gil, presidente de Termotechnic, que ha negado cualquier tipo de relación con el envío recibido por Gabriel Calzada, el presidente del Instituto Juan de Mariana. Digital Freedom has been able to talk to Pedro Gil, president of Termotechnic, who has denied any connection with the shipment received by Gabriel Calzada, President of the Instituto Juan de Mariana. Según sus propias palabras, “esto ha tenido que ser un error”. In his own words, “this has to be a mistake.”

El empresario navarro ha asegurado que lo único que se había enviado a Calzada era un informe sobre las energías renovables. The employer has secured Navarre only thing that had been sent to Calzada was a report on renewable energy. El problema es que lo que recibió el articulista de Libertad Digital fue un paquete lleno de piezas sueltas sin ningún tipo de nota explicativa. The problem is that what was the writer of Liberty Digital was a package of spare parts without any explanatory note. Cuando llamó a la empresa para preguntar qué había pasado le respondieron que eso era “una respuesta a su informe sobre las renovables”. When she called the company and ask what had happened he replied that it was “a response to its report on renewables.”

En ese momento, Calzada interpretó el hecho como una amenaza, algo que Gil niega. At that time, Calzada interpreted the incident as a threat, something that Gil dispute. De esta manera, hay dos versiones para lo sucedido: o bien hubo un simple error por parte de la empresa de mensajería o bien un cambio realizado por alguien que quisiera gastarle una mala pasada a Calzada a costa de esta empresa. Thus there are two versions of what happened: either there was a simple mistake by the courier company or a change made by someone who wanted to spend a dirty trick on Calzada at the expense of this company.

En este sentido, el presidente del Instituto Juan de Mariana ha confirmado que ha hablado con Pedro Gil y que éste le ha dado su palabra de que no hay ninguna responsabilidad por parte de la empresa. In this sense, the president of the Instituto Juan de Mariana has confirmed he has talked with Pedro Gil and it has given his word that there is no liability on the part of the company. Gil le ha transmitido a Calzada su preocupación por las molestias que le haya podido ocasionar, puesto que comprende el desconcierto que tuvo el receptor del envío cuando vio cuál era su contenido. Gil Calzada has been forwarded to concerned about the inconvenience we may have caused, because he understands the confusion that the receiver of the shipment when he saw what was its content.

Gil ha reiterado a Libertad Digital que es “un empresario honrando de 59 años” y que nunca haría algo así. Gil has repeatedly told ABC News it was “a businessman honored for 59 years” and would never do something like that. También ha pedido que quede claro que no hay relación entre lo recibido por Calzada y lo que él quería enviarle. It has also asked to make clear that there is no relationship between Calzada and received what he wanted to send.

Mixup at the courier company? Hoax?

In any case, the story that a think tank would be sending bombs to people in Spain makes little sense.  Spain is a nation long wracked by terrorists both foreign and domestic.  Bomb-senders go to jail in Spain.

Do you remember just a couple of weeks ago that several of these same self-proclaimed were taken in by a claim that fourth grade science project in Beeville, Texas, had disproven the hypothesis of global warming?

Do any of those guys know what Santayana said?

The story indicates that Gabriel Calzada got a package that was not the report the sender, Thermotechnic, intended to send.

From there, it’s a leap to imagine that Thermotechnic intended to send a bomb of any sort; there is no evidence apparent from anyone, anywhere, that such an event occurred.

Gullibles assumed the most fantastic, however.

The fantastic story has been denied by Thermotechnic.  Why aren’t the “warming skeptics” reporting the denial?  If a half-truth is a whole lie, these people have a lot of explaining to do, and apologies to render.  Forrest Gump might advise that a skeptic is as a skeptic does.

Commenters on Horner’s article at Pajamas Media and WUWT wonder why more major news outlets are not covering this story.  One reason appears to be that no police report was filed — a police report on a bomb sent to an academic would be news.  Can you think of other reasons it hasn’t gotten coverage?

Remember the famous Sherlock Holmes example of the dog that didn’t bark in the night.  Here we have skeptics who aren’t skeptical.  Hoax.

Wall of Shame:  Outlets that reported only half the story, and not the denial

In addition to Watts Up and Horner at Pajamas Media, it’s a too-long list of people who should know better:

• Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit, was Instawrong and owes Insta-apologies (par for this guy’s course — is there any science topic he’s not grossly naive about?)  The farce is strong in Reynolds, Obi Wan:  He did it again.
• Dean’s World got sucked in
• Patriotic Dissent made the unpatriotic error (American patriots are famous for getting the facts first . . .)
• Lucia at The Blackboard got suckered
• Quotulatiousness got suckered
• Scary Libertarian was scarily gullible
• The Grumpy Republican shows why we should all steer clear of grumpy Republicans (are any of them not grumpy?)  Barry Goldwater, who I watched on the floor of the Senate for years, would never have been so gullible.
• Rebellion News got suckered
• James Barlow in the UK got suckered
• XM MLB Chat got suckered — but, heck, this looks like a robot site; shouldn’t the human-operated sites do better?
• Jorge Valín got suckered
• Maggie at Chandler’s Watch got suckered
• ImpeachObamaToday impeached itself
• Random Nuclear Strikes/Soft Green Glow.com
• PoliticalForum.com followed James Barlow down the rabbit hole
• ZetaBoards Liestoppers group (oh, the irony)
• Andrew Bolt stepped into the open manhole
• Randall Hoven at American Thinker (Sheesh!  He coulda checked here first — the explanation from Dr. Calzada was already out by then, wasn’t it?)
• British Democracy Forum — by the headline; the second poster had the good sense to check here first

Prize quote: “Yes. AB’s blog is packed with skeptics. The sort that are born every minute. The only exception seems to have been poster “george”, who bothered to google it.”

Honor roll:

• Little Green Footballs gets it right
• Discussion at the JREF Forum saves ‘em

Warn others of the hoax:

Record of error on climate continues at Powerline

So, this Hinderaker guy at Powerline:  Does he ever acknowledge his goofs?

Since we last visited the issue, a month after the record was in that his claims of no warming were wrong, he’s talked about the issue at least twice.

Hinderaker didn’t fix his error here, in December.

Hinderaker didn’t fix his error here, in February, and in fact proceeded as if he’d been right instead of wrong.

This is Sith-strength denialism on Hinderaker’s part, don’t you think?  It never was about the science at Powerline, but instead has always been about the politics.

How does the moniker “Baghdad Bob John” fit?

Climate change: We’ll see you in court

Contemplation of Justice, statue by James Earle Fraser at the U.S. Supreme Court (exterior) - photo by Steve Petteway

From a press release from Gardere and Wynn:

Gardere’s Faulk And Gray Tapped To Represent Business, Industry In Climate Change Amicus Briefs

Gardere Wynne Sewell attorneys Richard O. Faulk and John S. Gray have been retained to write amicus curiae briefs to federal appellate courts and the U.S. Supreme Court in relation to public nuisance lawsuits regarding global climate change.

(I-Newswire) May 13, 2010 – HOUSTON – Richard O. Faulk and John S. Gray, co-chairs of Gardere Wynne Sewell LLP’s Climate Change Task Force, have been retained to write amicus curiae briefs to federal appellate courts and the U.S. Supreme Court in relation to public nuisance lawsuits regarding global climate change.

Mr. Faulk and Mr. Gray, partners in Gardere’s Houston office, will represent a group of organizations that include the American Chemistry Council, The National Petrochemical & Refiners Association, The American Coatings Association, and the Public Nuisance Fairness Coalition.

The first brief was filed in the 5th Circuit on Friday, May 7, in the case of Comer v. Murphy Oil. In that case, a group of property owners sued utility, mining, oil and chemical companies claiming their CO2 emissions ultimately caused the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. Comer had originally been dismissed at the trial level because the plaintiffs lacked standing to sue particular defendants for the effects of global warming, among other reasons.

A panel of the 5th Circuit reversed the dismissal, but on February 26 the court granted an en banc rehearing. The court is now weighing a number of procedural concerns caused by a number of judicial recusals, and has not set a final date for oral arguments.

“Despite the current procedural wrangling, the 5th circuit’s initial decision to reconsider the panel’s ruling remains a major blow to climate change and public nuisance litigation,” Faulk said. “Although the final decision, the panel’s original decision now has no value. Clearly, a significant number of the court’s judges believe the case deserves a closer look, and plaintiffs are surely not comforted by that development. Indeed, since no judge on the original panel dissented, the en banc court’s decision to reconsider suggests a serious interest in changing the result.”

Mr. Faulk and Mr. Gray also plan to file amicus briefs in Native Village of Kivalina, Alaska v. ExxonMobil Corp., et al., which is pending in the 9th Circuit, and Connecticut v. American Electric Power, a 2nd Circuit decision in which a petition for certiorari to the United States Supreme Court is expected to be filed. Both of those cases also involve the propriety of using public nuisance litigation to redress global climate change.

Mr. Faulk and Mr. Gray have authored many scholarly articles regarding public nuisance and climate change. One of their major papers, “Stormy Weather Ahead: The Legal Environment of Global Climate Change,” has been presented at conferences of the United States Chamber of Commerce, in media events at the Washington Legal Foundation, at various Professional Development seminars for lawyers, engineers, and businessmen. A complete collection of their articles is available at http://works.bepress.com/richard_faulk/subject_areas.html#Climate%20Change.

In addition, Mr. Faulk recently spoke on climate change lawsuits at the Judicial Symposium on The Expansion of Liability Under Public Nuisance on April 26 at the Searle Center on Law, Regulation, and Economic Growth, Northwestern University School of Law.

Gardere Wynne Sewell LLP, an AmLaw 200 firm founded in 1909 and one of the Southwest’s largest full-service law firms, has offices in Austin, Dallas, Houston and Mexico City. Gardere provides legal services to private and public companies and individuals in areas of energy, hospitality, litigation, corporate, tax, government affairs, environmental, labor and employment, intellectual property and financial services.

Familiar with any of those cases?

Were denialists to have the facts, some of those legal cases would be the places that the facts emerge in useful-to-stop-climate-change-legislation fashion.

Want to make bets on whether those who desperately want (and maybe need) climate change denialists to be right, actually use the climate denialists’ studies?

Watch those cases.