From Climategate to Denialgate

RichieC

"fanatical environmentalism" - is this Jungian shadow aspect shining through from fanatical free market advocates?

Scofflaw

RichieC wrote: »

"fanatical environmentalism" - is this Jungian shadow aspect shining through from fanatical free market advocates?

There are, of course, fanatical environmentalists, but the branding has had to be extended to reach anyone and everyone who objects to what ought to be a scientific policy debate being poisoned by outfits like Heartland, which are very clearly not trying to add information to the debate, but only disinformation, and not from a neutral position but to protect their paying clients' bottom lines. Basically anyone who accepts that maybe the scientists are right (and if one scientist objecting is important, why are the hundreds of thousands agreeing somehow irrelevant?) and that maybe we ought to do something about the issue is now an "environmental fanatic".

And that's kind of hilarious, really, because it means the world is full of fanatically environmental governments. And as any environmental scientist will tell you, that's not remotely the case. But then, perhaps there are degrees of fanaticism, with environmental experts more fanatical than mere governments?

It's extraordinary, also, that a company like Heartland, which is clearly acting as a PR consultancy and nothing else, has tax-exempt status. What is Heartland doing except PR? I can't see how it's anything but a PR company that needn't pay tax as long as it characterises its clients' payments as donations and its PR campaigns on their behalf as political campaigns, except of course not the kind of political campaigns that attempt to change legislation (is there another kind?) because that would be lobbying, which is something else Heartland apparently don't do, despite the extensive connections with legislators they make a point of boasting about in donor drives.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Permabear

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Scofflaw

Permabear wrote: »

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And there we have it. As almost invariably happens in climate related debates, the two sides here will walk away with completely different histories in their memories.

No attempt will be made by Heartland's defenders to address the issue of a Heartland pumping misinformation into a scientific debate, the fact that they're doing so, despite their tax-free status, as paid PR agents defending corporate bottom lines, or the fact that supposedly "neutral" commentators are being paid by said PR agency to produce material that helps defend their bottom line.

No, it will all be about what a jerk this Gleick guy is. Documents? An honest person wouldn't even look at documents obtained by deception, so clearly there's nothing to be discussed about the contents! Except by dishonest people...oh, really...everyone on the scientific side of the question, you say? Shocking, shocking...but how could one be surprised?

Ah well. An impressive demonstration of the power of rationalisation, where the ends don't just justify the means, but make the means entirely invisible. Mental shields up!

cordially,
Scofflaw

Permabear

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Scofflaw

Scofflaw wrote:

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Permabear wrote: »

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QED, pretty much. Nothing learned here.

The point is not a defence of Gleick - who has, as I've now said several times (invisibly to Permabear, apparently), done his reputation permanent damage through deception - but that HI defenders are very obviously trying to concentrate on Gleick's actions to the exclusion of everything else, because "everything else" here is documents from the people they're defending which show Heartland acting as a misinformation PR agency for corporate interests in the climate change debate, just as they did for the tobacco agency. And HI's defenders don't want people looking at that.

Whatever happens to Gleick, that remains the real story here. One half of the policy debate has been shown through its own documents to have nothing up its sleeve but PR tactics, while "disinterested" commentators like Watts have been shown to be on the company shilling. The facade of neutrality and objectivity is completely broken.

That's what has made this thread so entertaining - there is an issue about Gleick, and there's an issue about Heartland. But Heartland's defenders don't want it to be possible to discuss the issues separately, whereas they're not in fact connected. The documents, however obtained, say what they say about the activities of a supposed "think tank" and their role in the "climate debate", which is one of poisoning the debate for money.

cordially,
Scofflaw

RichieC

What if the "means justified the ends" and the allegations were far more serious?

Money still wins.

http://wannabehacks.co.uk/2011/12/01/a-us-phone-hacking-tale-chiquita-banana-and-the-public-right-to-know/

Chiquita is a major international company. In 1998, the Cincinnati Enquirer published an 18-page expose about some sinister practices. The expose alleged Chiquita was involved in a scheme bribing Colombian officials, smuggling cocaine to the US on their boats (Chiquita denies this), bulldozing villages, running poorly-protected independent sites to circumvent law and other supposed nefarious dealings.

Yet two months after the story was published – it all but vanished from record. An apology was run on the front page for 3 days in a row. Gannett, the Enquirer’s parent company, paid out $10 million in damages to Chiquita International, the paper’s editor sacrificed as a scapegoat and the arrest and conviction of one of the reporters involved in the piece.

All because that one reporter (of two who reported the story) hacked into Chiquita’s voicemail system, listening to over 2,000 messages. Initially, the series was run with an editor’s note saying the reporter obtained taped voicemails from a high level source within Chiquita. In actuality the reporter hacked into the voicemail system himself, with pass codes given to him by a disgruntled Chiquita lawyer.

The paper never had its findings challenged, nor is it remembered as a great investigative piece. The Enquirer expose will only be remembered as legal armageddon and a future phone hacking case study. But it is, as the CJR so rightly put it, not analogous to the NOTW scandal in any real way, aside from the loose association provided by the action of phone hacking.

Permabear

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Scofflaw

Permabear wrote: »

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Shrug - neither you nor I define the news. We can only argue our points of view, as we have done, and leave the reader to judge. The wider media will do the same - and there I would certainly expect media to have a slant in the direction of HI's preferred narrative, if for no other reason than that HI are a professional PR outfit with good contacts.

But as I'm sure you're equally aware, even the heaviest PR onslaught is imperfectly effective, and the damage done to the pretence of objectivity and neutrality on the part of prominent climate change opponents will also be non-trivial. I'm sure that in your eyes, and in the eyes of other dyed in the wool "skeptics", they'll remain entirely unblemished - but that will continue to be the case no matter what happens, or what they do, as you've made very clear here.

It's instructive, may I add, that you cannot actually bring yourself to defend HI's tactics, preferring to brush them aside as "unsurprising" or "unremarkable" and batten on Gleick's actions as something you can address with a clear conscience. And I agree they are unsurprising, but they're no less discreditable for that - and apparently you think so too, if your relative silence on them here is anything to go by.

And I would say, if I may make a personal remark, that that's why you feel "bullied" - because you're a moral (if ideological) person, and I keep returning to a point that makes you deeply uncomfortable. Defending corporate profits by lying for paying clients - in an issue where credible scientific evidence shows harm resulting - is not moral. And that's what Heartland does. It's what they did for the tobacco companies (and tobacco companies are still their "donors"), and it's what they do in the climate "debate" (and fossil fuel companies are their "donors").

That's why this has to be about Gleick, for you and for those like you - and for Heartland, although in their case it's because it would hurt their profits, rather than morality. Because the real story here is indefensible.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Duiske

Scofflaw wrote: »

Good Lord, but why on earth would it damage donor relations? Surely everything is above board and absolutely creditable in giving to such a fine "think tank" - you've said so yourself. If they've nothing to hide, they've obviously nothing to fear.

Heartland published lists of donor's until about 2006, when donor's began reporting threats and abuse from climate fanatics. Jim Lakely, Communications Director at HI, today released e-mail discussions between himself and Peter Gleick regarding an invite to Gleick to speak at a Heartland conference. This very issue was discussed in the e-mails.

Scofflaw

Duiske wrote: »

Heartland published lists of donor's until about 2006, when donor's began reporting threats and abuse from climate fanatics. Jim Lakely, Communications Director at HI, today released e-mail discussions between himself and Peter Gleick regarding an invite to Gleick to speak at a Heartland conference. This very issue was discussed in the e-mails.

It was, but the reasons aren't either what you gave, or necessarily credible:

Heartland Institute wrote:

• People who disagree with our views have taken to selectively disclosing names of donors who they think are unpopular in order to avoid addressing the merits of our positions. Listing our donors makes this unfair and misleading tactic possible. By not disclosing our donors, we keep the focus on the issue.

I'm sure that being funded by tobacco companies is completely irrelevant to HI's interventions in the smoking "debate"...in favour of tobacco companies. We can have another look at that letter to Philip Morris pointing out that "no-one does more for your bottom line", if you like.

Heartland Institute wrote:

• We have procedures in place that protect our writers and editors from undue influence by donors. This makes the identities of our donors irrelevant.

That's kind of hilarious, given the material in the HI documents, where the discussion of campaign plans make it clear HI's output is tailored to the interests of its donors. See above re Philip Morris letter.

Heartland Institute wrote:

• We frequently take positions at odds with those of the individuals and companies who fund us, so it is unfair to them as well as to us to mention their funding when expressing our point of view.

I'm sure. Would there be examples of such positions?

Heartland Institute wrote:

• No corporate donor gives more than 5 percent of our budget, and most give far less than that. We have a diverse funding base that is too large to accurately summarize each time we issue a statement.

Nicely weaseled, considering that one Anonymous Donor gives up to 60% of HI's budget.

This would be a credible list of reasons for an independent think tank. Pity HI's internal documents show it not to be one.

cordially,
Scofflaw

RichieC

haha, yea their big defence of Walmarts employer practices was not influenced by their 300k donation... not at all. it was lucky coinkydink!

Permabear

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karma_

Permabear wrote: »

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Seventeen pages in, and the above line is all we actually get from you on the crux of the matter.

So far your argument has amounted to, in it's most basic form - 'It is acceptable to lie to people for profit.'

Sixteen pages of defending that ideal, and attacking the man who obtained the documents, and this is all you have to say about the HI?

Your problem is that you are politicising science.

Scofflaw

Permabear wrote: »

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That is indeed a nuanced - and somewhat discursive - comment. As karma_ notes, we've gone 17 pages into this before we got to that.

It may come as a surprise to you - although it shouldn't - that my position is equally nuanced. I haven't called for Heartland to be abolished by government fiat - although I do think any pretence that they're not a PR agency pushing politics into science in defence of paying clients' interest is laughable, and with it the idea that their tax-exempt status is in any way justified.

Nor do I care about "evil right-wing billionaires". Everyone is entitled to their view, and entitled to spend money promoting or defending that view. That they happen to have more to spend than the next guy neither makes their views more admirable, nor less.

I can fully appreciate that what worries many opponents of climate change is not the science but the policies - which is why I have referred to it as a scientific policy debate. Many of the solutions that have been proposed are indeed wrong-headed, short-sighted, contradictory, etc etc, and some of them are even left-wing as well. I have very little time, for example, for the "climate justice" brigade, who I regard as bandwagon-jumpers of the first degree - the idea that we should do nothing about climate change unless what we do is somehow redistributory patently regards the problem as secondary to the opportunity to push ideology.

But I have no difficulty at all in stating that what Heartland are doing is simply wrong. Misinformation is common enough in complex debates without deliberately manufacturing disinformation for profit - one's own or other people's.

And I'm not calling for Heartland be regulated out of existence, because those with the power to regulate such things are wrong at least as often as they're right.

I'm not looking for anything other than Heartland's disinformation to be clearly seen as such, because they are poisoning the debate. And, as such, I'm not impressed by the attempt to make this about Gleick, because that's just a way of covering up what Heartland are doing. You're playing by Heartland's book here, and endeavouring mightily to draw attention away from tactics you have described as misguided and wrong-headed - helping to try to make people not look clearly at what Heartland are doing.

That's not a contribution to an honest debate - and surely the ability to have honest debate is the point of free speech, not the protection of paid-for lies? You know how easy the anti-science game is, and you know that people get harmed as a result of people playing the anti-science card, whether out of personal belief or to protect their bottom line.

I don't see how protecting deliberate examples of dishonesty in complex debates can be moral whatever your political beliefs, and I cannot see how a political belief that justifies dishonesty can be anything other than immoral in itself. If we are not honest, then we cannot be free - we are only wearing our chains on the inside.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Valmont

Permabear wrote: »

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This is exactly the issue--repeatedly trying to conceptualise the debate exclusively in terms of denying or accepting the science; which is limiting consider what is at stake. The policy decisions resulting from the science affect individuals who choose to smoke, who choose to drive big cars and these issues are what drive the 'non-scientific' opposition.

Because, no matter how you spin it, the realm of debate shifts from the exclusively scientific to the moral and ethical--especially when you are proposing to coerce people to behave in certain ways. This point concerning the conceptual shift needed to discuss the implementation of scientifically informed policy is one that seems to have escaped the scientific technocrats.

Valmont

For those interested: A summary of the sceptic's position on the science.

RandomName2

Scofflaw wrote: »

The US' Heartland Institute, a conservative/libertarian thinktank, is in a little spot of PR bother after internal documents (all but one verified, the unverified one containing information repeated in the others) show their network of climate denial funding:

Public relations and truth are two separate issues.

Whilst objectivity and funding are not mutually exclusive properties, I am looking for (and not finding) bogus reports (unlike.. ah.. investigations which 'confirmed' climate change/global warming/cooling). Hockey stick graphs anyone?

Edit: Anyway, as Permabear said, free-speech is a fundamentally good thing. Otherwise one would have to question the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on schlock propaganda such as An Inconvenient Truth, The Day After Tomorrow, The Day the Earth Stood Still (remake), etc. No, seriously, despite the fact that these are distinctly anti-science, they are just "films".

20Cent

Valmont wrote: »

For those interested: A summary of the sceptic's position on the science.

Taking scientific knowledge from an economics website can't be a good idea.

Climate change has only been made a "left" "right" issue artificially by think tanks such as Heartland in order to divide and conquer. Thought libertarians were against harming others? Damaging the climate harms others.

SupaNova

20Cent wrote: »

Taking scientific knowledge from an economics website can't be a good idea.

Did you even look at the article? The graphs in the article speak for themselves, and the sources are given at the bottom of the article. Maybe you missed that.:o And knowing how previous predictions have been way off from what has happened in reality is a good idea, if you want to deal with the topic in an honest manner.

20Cent

SupaNova wrote: »

Did you even look at the article? The graphs in the article speak for themselves, and the sources are given at the bottom of the article. Maybe you missed that.:o And knowing how previous predictions have been way off from what has happened in reality is a good idea, if you want to deal with the topic in an honest manner.

I wonder who funds the Mises Institute?

SupaNova

Right wing billionaires.

Permabear

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BluntGuy

Valmont wrote: »

For those interested: A summary of the sceptic's position on the science.

Nice to see the Hansen myth doing the rounds again.

The climate models overestimate temperature rises due to CO2 by at least a factor of three.

Except they don't. I actually can't describe this as anything less than a blatant lie, based on manipulation of data. It owes its origins to the Libertarian think tank The Cato Institute's Patrick Michaels who deliberately omitted chunks of Hansen's data to support this claim.

SupaNova

BluntGuy wrote: »

Nice to see the Hansen myth doing the rounds again.



Except they don't. I actually can't describe this as anything less than a blatant lie, based on manipulation of data. It owes its origins to the Libertarian think tank The Cato Institute's Patrick Michaels who deliberately omitted chunks of Hansen's data to support this claim.

The article shows Hansen's prediction vs reality, please tell me how this is manipulation of data???

BluntGuy

SupaNova wrote: »

The article shows Hansen's prediction vs reality, please tell me how this is manipulation of data???

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/hansens-1988-projections/

This provides an excellent explanation of how Hansen's findings correlate with the reality of the situation.

The manipulation I refer to is the source of the claim of a factor of "at least 3" or "300%" as I've had more commonly said to me before in other debates. It comes from Patrick Michaels deliberately omitting the Scenario B and Scenario C from his analysis of Hansen's findings. Despite the rather clear evidence that the Scenario B (which Hansen himself remarked was the most likely), taking into account its modest offset from recorded data, actually corroborates the Climate change predictions rather than defeats such notions, this myth continues to go on repeated, often unchallenged.

karma_

Permabear wrote: »

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It's a bit late in the day to now play the 'consistency' card, not when you spent sixteen pages crying 'GLEICK, GLEICK, GLEICK... Heartland'. That's not consistency, in fact that's the opposite. It also speaks volumes that the worst condemnation you have to offer about the HI is that they are 'misguided and wrong-headed' (twice no less). So please, spare us the rhetoric, you're fooling no one, bar yourself I imagine.

Also, if I have to read one more sentence by Megan McAdrle, I joke you not I will be physically ill.

And... Don't get me started on 'partisan advocacy'.

Permabear

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karma_

Permabear wrote: »

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Free speech? Using that to defend the HI is an affront to anyone who has ever stood up, demanded and defended the right of free speech. Free speech does not automatically allow you the right to knowingly disseminate lies.

Memnoch

karma_ wrote: »

Free speech? Using that to defend the HI is an affront to anyone who has ever stood up, demanded and defended the right of free speech. Free speech does not automatically allow you the right to knowingly disseminate lies.

Right and wrong. Free speech does allow you to lie, as it allows others to correct your lies. But the part that is reprehensible and detestable is when people try to argue that because of the idea of free speech, the lies and PR spin don't matter or aren't significant. That it's free speech that's at stake. That somehow, pointing out these people are liars and that their 'free speech,' is bought and paid for, it is somehow an attack on free speech itself.

What a horribly dishonest position to take. And like you said, it diminishes the concept and value of free speech.

Shame on them.