Archive for February, 2012


Heartland Associate Taught at Canadian College

Filed Under: Uncategorized by Mark Nykanen — 2 Comments
February 29, 2012

First, we heard that the Heartland Institute, the think tank that likes to take credit for discrediting climate science, planned to spend $100,000 on a project to question well-established teaching of climate science in American public schools. But guess what? They’ve already had a huge hand at Carleton University in Canada. That’s right, Ottawa’s Carleton University let a mechanical engineer teach a class to non science majors — one way to reduce the rigor of classroom challenges — that was so bad an independent audit by real scientists says that the lectures made 142 false, biased and misleading claims to students. Keep in mind, it’s likely that for many of those students, it was the only class they’ll take on climate change as undergrads.

According to the audit by the Canadian Committee for the Advancement of Scientific Skepticism, “The content of this particular course is heavily biased against the scientific consensus concerning the anthropogenic (human-triggered) causes of dangerous climate change…The unbalanced nature of the course, the lack of peer-reviewed literature cited, and the non-science audience mean that the course fails to constitute ‘promotion of debate’ and instead merely presents a biased and inaccurate portrayal of contemporary climate science.”

Tom Harris, the mechanical engineer lecturer, has also done press relations for the electrical and gas industries. The scientific review said some of the points Harris made in the lectures were just plain wrong, including the following: that there is only one weather station in the Canadian Arctic — there are more than 40; that the Amazon jungle is a relatively new formation, in geological germs; and that urban weather stations do not show consistent warming. According to the London Guardian’s report, Harris also “ventured into hyperbole, saying the weather-caster and prominent climate doubter blogger Anthony Watts ‘deserves a Nobel prize or a prize of some sort.’”

Carleton responded–this is staggering–by suggesting that Harris’s choice of teaching material was an issue of academic freedom. John Stone, a former bureau member of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, who reviewed the report, rejected the argument that criticism of Harris’s course was an assault on academic freedom. The Guardian quoted Stone as saying, “Does that mean that in biology you can teach biology that totally ignores Darwin’s theory of evolution. Does it mean in geography that you can continue to teach we live in an earth-centered solar system? I don’t think so. The science behind climate change is every bit as solid.”

Here’s the link to the Guardian for more:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/28/heartland-associate-climate-scepticism-ottawa-university

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“Perpetual Growth Myth” Versus Survival of Humans

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February 26, 2012

Are you familiar with the Blue Planet Prize? It’s nicknamed the Nobel Prize for the environment. Twenty winners of the Blue Planet recently published a paper that forecasts environmental and social meltdown worldwide because the current economic models most widely embraced are predicated on constant economic growth in which gross domestic product, GDP, serves as a thermometer of a nation’s health. But, of course, another kind of thermometer, one less metaphorical in nature, strongly suggests what we’re heading toward a 3-5 degree Celsius increase in Earth’s temperature.

Bob Watson, Britain’s chief scientific advisor on environmental issues — hardly a fringe type — and one of the Blue Planet winners (2010) says the current growth-based system is broken “and is eliminating the ecology that we depend on for our health, wealth and senses of self.”

The paper by the winners says society has “no choice but to take dramatic action to avert a collapse of civilization. Either we will change our ways and build an entirely new kind of global society, or they will be changed for us.” Sobering enough for you? Here’s more: “The perpetual growth myth…promotes the impossible idea that indiscriminate economic growth is the cure for all the world’s problems, while it is actually the disease that is at the root cause of our unsustainable global practices.” Further, the report notes, “The rapidly deteriorating biophysical situation is more than bad enough, but it is barely recognized by a global society infected by the irrational belief that physical economies can grow forever and disregarding the facts that the rich in developed and developing countries get richer and the poor are left behind.”

CommonDreams has this report. The report includes strong suggestions for changing from GDP metrics to those predicated on natural, human and social capital; the elimination of subsidies for industries that generate environmetnal and social costs; dealing with increasing population; empowering marginalized groups; conserving and valuing biodiversity and ecosytem services, and investing in knowledge. Here’s the link to CommonDreams:

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/02/20-5

Here’s the link to a press release from the Blue Planet winners:

http://www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?DocumentID=2667&ArticleID=9026&l=en

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“Land Mines, Blood Diamonds and Cluster Bombs…” and Tar Sands

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February 23, 2012

Alberta’s tar sands kept notorious company in a quote yesterday from Britain’s Liberal Democrats, who have compared the bitumen to examples of infamous weapons and mining. The quote came before a pivotal European Union vote that failed to label oil refined from tar sands as highly polluting. Passage of the EU proposal would have meant that tar sands oil would have been officially noted as producing 22 percent more greenhouse gases than conventional oil because of the extra energy to mine the bitumen and refine it.

That vote was seen as a critical test of the EU’s ability to put its climate change polices into effect. But the failure to label oil made from tar sands as highly polluting does not mean Europe will soon be sipping on Canada’s crude. The measure is now headed to the European parliament. In short, the effort to label the crude as especially harmful to the environment could still become law. And that means a fierce lobbying battle will continue in the EU.

Canadian officials, predictably, are fighting back. Joe Oliver, Canada’s minister of natural resources, said that while he was pleased with the vote, Canada would not hesitate to “defend its interests,” as quoted in the London Guardian. The paper notes Canadian officials held a private summit in 2011 to brainstorm about winning approval for tar sands oil in the EU. Why? To protect the “huge investments from the likes of Shell, BP, Total and Statoil.” These are the interests Canadian officials are representing? Sadly, the answer, once again, is yes.

Here’s the link to the Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/23/eu-tar-sands-pollution-vote?newsfeed=true

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Canadian Scientists Muzzled

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February 22, 2012

One of the biggest topics of conversation at the Vancouver meeting of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science…is the lack of conversation that journalists are permitted to have with Canadian scientists. Even when Canadian scientists publish their findings in scientific journals, they’re not permitted to talk to journalists in a timely manner, if at all. Case in point: Last year Canadian government scientist Kristi Miller published what was deemed a “groundbreaking paper” on the decline of salmon populations in western Canada in the journal Science. She was not allowed to talk to the press.

Inter Press Service also reports that lobbyists for oil and gas industry interests appear to have easy access to scientists. What’s the bottom line on that? An 80 percent drop in Canadian media coverage of climate change since the Harper government put those restrictive guidelines into effect. Stephen Hwang, a professor of general internal medicine at the University of Toronto issued a statement, saying “The open discussion of ideas is essential to science, just as a free press is essential to democracy.”

The Bush administration instituted similar controls, which saw the world’s premier climatologist, James Hansen, shadowed by a political operative in his early twenties whose job, apparently, was to make sure Hansen did not speak to reporters. Some of those restrictive policies are still in effect under the Obama administration, according to Francesca Grifo of the Union of Concerned Scientists, who is quoted by Inter Press.

It’s probably not a coincidence that a January survey by the Pew Research Center of the top 22 policy priorities in the U.S. found the public ranking climate change at…number 22. The dramatic 80 percent decline in Canadian coverage of climate change is very likely linked to the restrictive Harper government policies. They also probably go a long way to explaining why the Canadian public also fails to see climate change as a serious issue; it ranked far down the list of concerns in the last federal election.

Out of sight, out of mind? It would appear so. Does anyone hear Nero’s fiddle?

Here’s the link to the Inter Press Service story:

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=106834

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Leaker of Heartland Documents Reveals HImself

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February 21, 2012

Big story today about the Heartland Institute documents that were released last week. Peter Gleick, a water scientist and president of the Pacific Institute — and a major voice trying to bring attention to the crisis of climate change — has admitted that he essentially tricked the libertarians over at Heartland into turning over the docs, which showed that the institute had plans to undercut children’s science education. Gleick has apologized, writing at the Huffington Pos, “My judgment was blinded by my frustration with the ongoing efforts — often anonymous, well-funded and co-ordinated — to attack climate science.”

Among other things, Gleick’s trick — let’s call it that for now — revealed a list of corporate sponsors of the Heartland Institute. A Heartland spokesman said an apology from Gleick wasn’t enough and that the institute was consulting legal experts.

Heartland maintains a two-page memo that purports to outline the institute’s climate strategy is a fake. Gleick says that document was the only one he released that was sent to him by an anonymous source. He said he “solicited and received additional material directly from the Heartland Institute under someone else’s name to try to verify the two-page memo’s authenticity.”

This has set off quite a firestorm in the blogosphere and in more traditional media, with various folks weighing on whether Gleick was justified in his actions, or simply wrong. Gleick clearly subscribes to the latter point of view. The London Guardian this morning quotes Scott Mandia, co-founder of the climate science rapid response team as saying, “They (Heartland) also subvert the education of our school children by trying to ‘teach the controversy’ where none exists.” The controversy noted is the one Heartland and other right-wing think tanks, politicians, and fossil fuel interests are trying to drum up about climate science (aka “denialism”). Mandia went on to say, “Peter Gleick, a scientist who is also a journalist just used the same tricks that any investigative reporter uses to uncover the truth. He is the hero and Heartland remains the villain.”

Over at the New York Times, Andrew Revkin, who’s been writing about climate science for many years, said “Gleick’s use of deception in pursuit of his cause after years of calling out climate deception has destroyed his credibility and harmed others.”

I’m not so sure about Revkin’s claim; I think it’s grayer than that.  As a journalist I often lied about my real identity, posing at different times as a child pornographer, pedophile, and burglar to expose criminals. On numerous occasions the network investigative team of which I was a part received private papers and leaked government documents. Digging deep isn’t always pretty, and there are changing attitudes toward muckraking as it has been practiced going all the way back to Ida Tarbell and Upton Sinclair (“The Jungle,” his novel about the meatpacking industry based on his first-hand experience in the processing plants). In the case of the two-man team that I was part of, an international child pornography ring was shut down, and children who watched the network documentary (NBC’s “The Silent Shame”) that we aired on the subject came forward to tell their caregivers for the first time about what they’d suffered. One child, the sister of an abused girl, revealed her own abuse on camera; it was later verified by child care workers. So was I wrong to go undercover? Did I tarnish my career by lying to child abusers to get them to admit their crimes on camera? I don’t think so, and climate change is arguably a much bigger threat to the planet than much of what has long occupied the interests of investigative reporters, including my own efforts.

I think it’s easy to take the high road and condemn Gleick, but down in the trenches of muckraking it does get dirty. Always has.

Here’s the link to the Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/21/heartland-institute-leak-climate-attack

Here’s the link to Revkin at The New York Times:

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/20/peter-gleick-admits-to-deception-in-obtaining-heartland-climate-files/?ref=science

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Climate Change Denial & Geologists — What Gives?

Filed Under: Uncategorized by Mark Nykanen — 1 Comment
February 19, 2012

Okay, so the headline is a tad informal, but if you’ve followed the phony “debate” about climate change, you might have noticed that geologists appear to be over-represented among the so-called experts claimed by the denier camp; hence, the “What gives?”

What gives is that geologists who do not depend on Big Oil or Big Coal are firm believers in climate change. Why? Simply put, they’re scientists and given to a world view that tilts strongly toward rationalism. But a terrific examination of this issue — and one that is more interesting than it may appear at first glance — was sent to me by a friend who also happens to be a scientist. It’s a piece by John Cook, who is co-author of “Climate Change Denial: Heads in the Sand.” How’s that for a book title? Clear enough.

Cook makes a good case for his position at the website for ABC News:(http://www.abc.net.au/environment/articles/2011/06/08/3226946.htm)
that geologists have been poorly represented publicly by the fact that two well-known skeptics, Ian Plimer and Bob Carter, do not hold views shared by the profession as a whole. Cook reports the following: a survey of earth scientists found that 97 percent of actively publishing climate scientists agree that humans are changing global temperatures, while only 47 percent of economic geologists — those who study geology with commercial exploitation in mind — agree that the climate change we’re currently enduring is caused by human activity. The professional associations are all in the believer camp. They include the European Federation of Geologists, the Geological Society of America, and the Geological Society of London.

Cook quotes that wonderfully wry observation of novelist Sinclair Lewis in explaining the discrepancy between the skeptical beliefs of geologists working for Big Energy and those who are not in the employ of ExxonMobil, TransCanada, and their ilk: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding.”

Cook goes on to provide a primer on climate change, then puts past climate change — long before humans — into perspective with a quote from renowned paleoclimatologist, Wally Broecker: “The paleoclimate records shouts out to us that, far from being self-stabilizing, the Earth’s climate system is an ornery beast which overreacts to even small nudges.”

Cook says we’ve already given our climate “a big nudge,” and that we know it’s causing global warming and doesn’t arise from natural causes because satellites have measured reductions in heat escaping to space — “direct empirical evidence that carbon emissions are trapping heat.” Also, measurements on terra firm clearly show that more heat is returning to Earth, which confirms the increased greenhouse effect. And then there are those winters warming fast than summers, along with other examples that he cites before concluding, “The case for human-caused warming is based on many independent lines of evidence.”

Cook offers this penultimate paragraph: “The feedbacks that amplified past climate change are now amplifying the warming caused by our carbon emissions. We’re measuring more water vapour in the atmosphere, a strong feedback. Arctic sea ice is disappearing and satellites measure less sunlight reflected back to space — another significant feedback. The Earth’s past and modern measurements all paint a consistent picture — our climate is already overreacting to our ‘nudge.’”

So according to Cook, peer-reviewed literature on past climate change “sends a strong message, in stark contrast to what we hear from petroleum geologists. Past climate change is not a source of comfort. It’s a cause for concern.”

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The (mostly) Upbeat Charms of Science & Climate Change

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February 17, 2012

We’ve heard lots of bad news about climate change, population growth, and the slippery slope of positive feedback loops, so it’s a relief to pass along a story about the findings of a group of scientists and business people that met last June in Ontario. The Globe and Mail reports today that on Sunday the group will publish the Equinox Blueprint, which envisions battery-powered cars fueled by renewable electricity, widespread use of thermal power, energy efficient cities, and a world in which all people, regardless of their wealth, have access to clean, affordable electricity.

The obstacles to such a successful outcome are staggering; after all, energy demand is expected to grow by 35 percent by 2035, not decline, and that means massive emissions of GHGs into the atmoshere. But for a few moments, anyway, let’s just open up to the possibility that we’ll emerge from the current malaise of inaction on climate science into a world that takes forthright steps to construct a sustainable future. What might it look like?

The Equinox Blueprint says we could very well have those great batteries that can store lots of energy — tagged the “Holy Grail of clean energy research” — and make huge strides in the production of geothermal energy. Ah, the report also says we’ll need advanced nuclear power, then moves on to say we’d also have to engineer off-grid power, and “smart urbanization.”

Did you wince over the reference to nuclear power? I did. Who wouldn’t after the latest nightmare — Fukushima? But I don’t we should reject the entirety of the report because of that, especially when it appears that there’s much to think about in the Equinox Blueprint.

Here’s the link to the Globe and Mail’s story:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/plotting-a-road-map-for-a-low-carbon-future/article2341616/

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At Heart(land), it’s not about Science

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February 16, 2012

Lots of attention devoted to the unauthorized release of documents from the non-profit Heartland Institute, which is well-known for attacking climate science. Among the headline findings gleaned from the documents are plans to promote a curriculum for U.S. schools that would undermine the teaching of climate science. Efforts to do so are already underway and often mirror the attempts to fight the teaching of evolution in public schools. In earlier posts here I’ve noted the work of the National Center for Science Education, which has long battled evangelicals and others opposed to the teaching of evolution in U.S. public schools. A spokesman for the Center is quoted in The New York Times this morning as saying the climate science documents from Heartland show that “they continue to promote confusion, doubt and debate where there really is none.”

The documents reportedly show that Heartland plans to spend $1.6 million on what it calls the “Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change,” which publishes reports attacking climate science. Heartland, btw, is also noted for holding “Denialpalooza,” as environmentalists call the group’s lavish annual conference.

The documents say Heartland budgeted $200,000 this year for a plan to promote skepticism of climate science, a curriculum that would claim that “whether humans are changing the climate is a major scientific controversy.”

In its story, The New York Times bluntly followed that quote with a breath of unequivocal fresh air: “It is in fact not a scientific controversy. The vast majority of climate scientists say that emissions generated by humans are changing the climate and putting the planet at long-term risk…” Nice to see the overwhelming scientific point of view stated so clearly when so many journalists feel it’s necessary to “balance” the climate change story with spurious accounts from flat-earthers.

Some of the nation’s biggest corporations are revealed in the documents as Heartland funders, though Big Pharma’s GlaxoSmithKline was quick to note that it “did not endorse or support their views on the environment or climate change.” Pretty much the same distancing from Heartland was evident in comments from Microsoft; a spokesperson was quoted as saying the corporation views climate change as a serious problem that should command “immediate worldwide action.” Microsoft says it gave Heartland software, not cash, as part of the assistance it provides to many nonprofit organizations.

No big oil companies were revealed as donors but Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation was noted in the docs for donating $25,000 last year, with another $200,000 apparently slated for this year. Koch Industries, as you may well know, is one of the U.S.’s largest privately owned companies and a major oil refiner. The Koch brothers — there are two of them — are huge supporters of right-wing causes and candidates.

I like The New York Times for this story, but the London Guardian has also been doing terrific work, along with many environmental bloggers.

Here are the links to the newspapers, first the Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/16/science/earth/in-heartland-institute-leak-a-plan-to-discredit-climate-teaching.html?ref=science

Here’s the link to the Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/15/leak-exposes-heartland-institute-climate

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Keystone XL Pipeline Petition

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February 14, 2012

To perhaps satisfy your activist bent, head here http://grist.org/climate-energy/tell-your-senator-hold-the-line-in-the-tar-sands/ to Grist to sign a petition that attempts to stop yet another Republican effort to get the pipeline authorized. If you need a primer on why, perhaps this will serve: Keystone XL will be a 1,700 mile pipeline from the tar-sands of Alberta to the Gulf coast that will carry the world’s filthiest crude. It would be built by a company with a history of pipeline failures. Most of the oil will be sent to overseas markets (re: China) and it will provide far fewer jobs than Republicans claim, as every impartial analysis of the project has found.

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Steroids, Baseball, & Climate Change Video

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February 14, 2012

Go to this link at The New York Times http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/13/on-home-runs-and-steroids-heat-and-co2/?ref=science for a witty, incisive, and edifying video on why steroids in baseball and climate change are alike. Go there particularly if you have friends or children, especially those with a penchant for sports, who need a quick primer on the subject.

 

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