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Well, let's play Guess That Shill. We've paid democrat shills, US deep state shills from things like this and this. We've corporate shills too, and definitely republican shills.

Personally, I noticed how Bernie Sanders was treated by the press, and how after the election with the flick of the switch all of the usual mouth pieces were on the same page with blaming fake news and russian collusion. It was actually impressive how well that was coordinated.

So now I wonder, who benefits the most from making the Russians appear as the all pervasive devil to eliminate any need for reform or accountability and keep our attention diverted. Any from that list? Which commentors are just ordinary people playing devils advocate since the subject of Russian activity is neither all or nothing? Could we actually have Russian shills too? Maybe! You decide whats more likely, while I enjoy my daily vodka ration. Cheers!

Apparently so little you cannot even find any to link to.

Here's an actual book by real scientists.

I think I know better, it's really hard to not say anything.

And that's the crux of the issue right there. You think you know better and yet, people who have made it their life's work more than likely do.

Oh yes, the ocean temperatures that we can't quantify like surface temperatures. We simply lack data to be useful in this area.

Who is this "we" that you refer to. "We" actually have very accurate ways to measure temperature and have been using them for decades now.

As for the 1930s, admit I'm right.

No, you're not right. Belief confirmation is a bitch but mankind developed a way of minimizing it's effect. We refer to this as the "Scientific method" and you would do well to become familiar with it. It isn't perfect but if you actually understood how it worked you would know the difference between making reasonable assumptions in order to test a theory and "cooking the numbers."

I'm sorry if you felt I was lambasting you. I threw in Algore for a couple of reasons.

Perish the thought. I didn't take your remark as being a personal attack. I found it interesting that you rightfully demand respect from others but don't feel the need to reciprocate.

Try as I might, I can find the article cited, talked about, I can't find anything about the data itself, how it was collected, method, anything.

While I can't explicitly quantify the amount of studies which have been peer reviewed and published, suffice it to say it is certainly in the thousands and more likely in the tens of thousands. It's not that the data isn't out there, it's simply a matter than you somehow can't seem to find it. Amazingly, that is nothing short of baffling.

As I said - baffle with bullshit.

Yes, yes you did.

This area is so saturated with assholes with an opinion it's challenging to find real scientific articles on it.

I honestly believe that you believe this. Seriously, I do. And yet, with all of your accomplishments that you filled us in on previously, you somehow can't locate articles that the scientific community has authored, reviewed, published, and discussed. Baffling.

He paid a lot for people like you to believe what you do.

Yes, people wasted a metric boatload of money to get other people to believe in a made up fairy tale.

Personally, I don't find this subject very appealing from an educational standpoint. Rather, I am enjoying this discussion with you based on my informal love of the science of Agnotology.

Beginning in the 1980s, when I was first introduced to the concept, I began collecting examples of this technique and have become somewhat adept at recognizing it when I see it. One of my favorite examples is the Heartland Institute's Please Don't Poop in My Salad .

Granted, more egregious tomes have been published but no one gets it quite a right as the Heartland Institute. From the title, right down to the last page, everything they present just feels right. Yes, any number of assertions and carefully manipulated facts are included but no one will ever outdo the carefully engineered presentation when it comes to making something so unpalatable sound so wonderful.

The common wisdom of the time, was the atmosphere was large enough and the biosphere diverse enough to clear up any toxins, and what men can do would only be a small effect.

And almost 100 years later, we've got knuckleheads today saying exactly the same thing.

http://news.heartland.org/news...

Mojave Solar Project Killing Threatened Desert Tortoises

And yet it happened:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ja...

You either didn't read the Forbes article you linked to, or you didn't comprehend it.

The article's author, James Taylor, claims that the survey conducted by the paper's researchers didn't ask the right question:

As is the case with other ‘surveys’ alleging an overwhelming scientific consensus on global warming, the question surveyed had absolutely nothing to do with the issues of contention between global warming alarmists and global warming skeptics.

Taylor does also claim that the papers composing the data of phase I of the study were misclassified - but he relies solely on the analysis of "investigative journalists" at the crank site Popular Technology to support his position. Further, both Taylor and Popular Technology conveniently ignore the fact that phase II of the study had the authors of the papers self-classify.

As an aside, pointing to an opinion piece on Forbes written by James Taylor, a lawyer at the Heartland Institute, hardly lends weight to ANY argument. Mr. Taylor claims to be a "scientist by training" because "I successfully completed Ivy League atmospheric science courses". His employer, Heartland Institute, has likened climate scientists to Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, murderer Charles Manson and Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.

Also this notion that peer review catches all frauds is laughable:

snip

NOBODY said the peer review process is perfect. But as GP correctly states, it's the best we've got. You seem to think that just because some academic fraud exists, that it's therefore having a substantial impact on climate science. That's a pretty extraordinary claim...got anything to back it up?

As to your point about reading the abstracts. That's not enough. You need to actually have the study itself vetted. And peer review does not do that.

That's not what GP was saying. Jesus. Namarrgon is saying that before YOU or some other guy on the internet starts pontificating about this or that scientific research, YOU should at least read the abstract of said research. But since you're happy to rely on opinion pieces and pop science articles that are chock full of hyperbole and distortion, I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that Namarrgon's wise advice is falling on deaf ears. At least in your case.

And that is frequently what is going on.

According to who? You? On what credible data do you base that extraordinary claim? Another James Taylor opinion piece in Forbes?

Compared to that bias, a blogger's personal agenda is nothing to speak of...

Wait...are you saying that James Taylor, a contributor to Forbes and Fellow at The Heartland Institute, is just another internet blogger with an agenda? No wonder that submission you griped about wasn't accepted.

Or perhaps it wasn't accepted because James Taylor is a lawyer, not a scientist, and his employers are known for saying things like "This is why the most prominent advocates of global warming aren't scientists. They are murderers, tyrants, and madmen."

That statement, and the billboard campaign that accompanied it, was so rational and unbiased that The Heartland Institute's corporate masters fled the organization in droves.

But you go on complaining about bias while promoting the "science" of lawyers working for corporate propaganda mills...it's actually quite entertaining.

All Court Judgements are conditional.

The Judgement against OJ for beating those memorabilia collectors up was conditional on there not being new evidence that Prosecutors made the whole thing up.

Given the evidence available in 2007, the Courts ruled global warming was real and CO32 was a pollutant. Since then the evidence has just grown. Temperature's spiking (9 of the hottest 10 years are within the past decade), the ice caps are melting, and the counter-points you're talking about are all fantasy from a Think Tank of wannabe social scientists. From their website, they seem to have a couple actual Education experts, a couple guys with bachelors degrees, and a Philosopher.

And if this was not the case, don't you think every coal plant in the country would be appealing Massachusetts vs. EPA for all they're worth?

Calling it an "equation" is a gross injustice as it implies that it is "science". It isn't. We don't know the ACTUAL percentages for ANY of the probabilities used in Drake's Equation. The only variable in Drake's Equation that we have the slightest idea about is the first one R* - the average rate of star formation. FFS, it has only been 10 years since we could actually detect a single plant outside of our solar system. And mind you, unless we know EVERY SINGLE PROBABILITY in the equation, it is rendered moot because if one of the unknowns is 0% the whole fucking result will be a big, fat, zero. This guy is a fucking quack. Michael Crichton has an awesome essay/speech about how this misunderstanding of Drakes Equation has made a whole generation of people ignorant of what real science is - the creation of testable hypothesis. Essay is here (PDF warning): http://heartland.org/sites/all...

^ The above post sponsored by the Heartland Institute

But PETA gives a lot of money to outfits like ALF that *are* terrorist organizations. Starter kit:

http://archive.adl.org/learn/e...

http://news.heartland.org/news...

Shit with these kind of stories, even the experts aren't allowed to be experts!

Well, it turns out that she isn't an expert in animal behaviour. Her specialty is zooarchaeology which is mostly concerned with how ancient people utilized animals in their cultural and dietary practices. (Disclosure: I'm an archaeologist who works on Vancouver Island where Dr. Crockford is located (University of Victoria). We hire people like Dr. Crockford to carry out studies like this for us.)

Meanwhile, she does appear to be connected to the Heartland Institute. There are lots of references to this via Google, Bing, etc. (Example: http://www.desmogblog.com/heartland-payments-university-victoria-professor-susan-crockford-probed).

There are also examples of her denialist stance from the Heartland Institute's own website (Example: http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2012/09/17/polar-bears-successfully-adapt-climate-change-scientist-says). A search of Heartland's site finds that she's quoted or cited on several of their pages, actually (http://policybot.enginez.com/results.engz?uq=crockford).

1. I think you are either ignorant or deceitful. In many cases, charter systems cannot by law or/and charter reject applicants based on selection criteria - they must accept all comers. If they have more applicants than slots, they must use a random lottery to select. -- This negates 1 point 4 also
2. This is usually true -- however I do not care, if a teacher is certified if the outcomes are good. Frankly, neither should you or anyone else. Certification is useless in and of itself. If the local principal and the families are happy with teachers, why should I care about a piece of paper -- shouldn't the closest and most involved be in a better position to judge a teacher than some certification process?
3. You think having to comply with insane testing is a good thing, clearly not? If nothing else, this should speak in favor of charter schools. I agree that we waste too much of the school year with performance testing, guess what, this is the result of trying to manage schools by a huge disconnected bureaucracy -- with control at the most local level, and school selection left to parents, there would not be the incentive to waste 2 or 4 weeks of the year on testing or the cheating.
5 It is true that they may or may not be better. But it is usually easier to shut down a dysfunctional charter school than a conventional public school. Oh, but the way, conventional public schools CHEAT on the tests too.

Socio-economic status is clearly a major factor, if not the major factor -- but it is very hard to decouple from the family influence.and the neighorhoods they live in. Personally, I am pretty convinced the family and neighborhood is the driving factor and the economic factors trend strongly with this.

The real question is why when some poor families are so thrilled to have their kids in some charter schools, escaping the horrid conventional public schools (esp. in those poor areas) -- why why why would I would want to close their charter and through they back in the cesspool. I

I think you need to get a grip on reality.

Personally I don't really much like charter schools, I would like to shut down every last government school in the country and support the education of the child directly -- i.e., the money follows the child. Just like they use in the Netherlands, as written into their constitution in 1917 so they have some experience with how well it works for them.

Here is is straight from the evil conservatives is an article that rebuts your claim about all virtually all the studies show how worthless charter schools are. But the way, it actually references the large-scale studies so you can check the claims.

Charter schools are clearly not always a good choice, they can yield bad results. But at least some of these lose their charter and are shut down. Very rare with conventional public schools.

The FDA point is somewhat more important here then anything. I bet you have been conditioned from the no smoking laws and all the reports being threaded to the public that if you look at a cigarette you will get cancer and die a horrible death 3 days ago. And if you ever see someone smoking, your eyes will fall out, you will have a heart attach and die on the spot from cancer.

The fact of the matter is that less than 10 percent of life long smokers ever get cancer and only about 30 percent of all cancer deaths are attributed to smoking. Granted, your risk of cancer does increase and certain types of cancer do increase if you smoke, but it's not the death nail in the coffin it is made out to be.

As for second hand smoke, This is more to the point as the health effects have not been proven and by some accounts, scientific principle has been completely ignored in order to make the association to the dangers.

But by no means am I saying smoking is not bad for you or that you shouldn't avoid second hand smoke if you want to either. But the hype surrounding some of the issues is blown way out of proportion and often are exaggerated. Even the US EPA lost a lawsuit in 1993-1998 for a report it issued stating people were dieing from second hand smoke due to cherry picking data and construing science in order to reach a predrawn conclusion. I guess I should also add that in 2003, the EPA had the decision reversed on appeal, not because their study or release was good, valid, or anything, but because it didn't carry any regulatory weight so it wasn't regulated by The Radon Research Act passed in 1986 under Title IV of the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986 (SARA).

Again, I'm not saying second hand smoke is good for you but it does appear that the science behind it being bad was if not originally, a political motivation in the least with the goal of using junk science to fuel future scientific reference to it by corruption of reality and pollution of facts. The fact is the EPA conducted itself in the exact same ways as you remember the cigarette industry doing. With open access to all the information, both can be detected more readily and pointed out publicly.

Here's a somewhat biased article, but it does describe the sorts of waivers issued.

Have you got a solution that doesn't involve regulation?

Before I start seeking solutions, I'd like convinced, the problem is anything but an excuse for more regulations. While the time given in long-term projections has not arrived yet, certain short-term ones have already been shown bogus. Such as Al Gore's claim — made in his UN speech — that Arctic ice will disappear by 2013...

Considering the fact, that he himself just recently purchased a multi-million estate not in, say, Colorado mountains, but at an ocean-front , I find it very difficult to believe, his implorations and exhortations are sincere.

In other words, he is lying. Either in complete cynicism and for personal enrichment, or to further those "regulations" for some Greater Good(TM).

Well no, I explained why - it dilutes the risk pool.

And I explained, that this becomes irrelevant after the pool reaches a certain size. Certainly insurers want to keep growing — like all corporations — but a company with 200 mln policy-holders is not more efficient (per holder), than one with 100 mln.

The numbers speak for themselves: the overhead of Medicare is about 6%. The overhead of a private health insurance company is closer to 20%.

First of all, we only know about Medicare's amazing figure from the Medicare themselves. It is in the bureaucrats' best interests to bump-up their efficiency figures, and they aren't particularly motivated to fight fraud — it is not their money being stolen, while reporting too much fraud will raise the questions about their efficiency. And second, Medicare is able to squeeze care-providers into money-losing rates. The providers then recoup the losses on commercially-insured (and uninsured) patients. Those of them, who don't cut off Medicare-covered patients at all, try hard to limit their numbers.

Competition requires innovation, innovation has to operate within the constraints of physical reality. Insurance is not a technological enterprise by and large, there's no new inventions which mean someone can gain a competitive advantage

This is completely false. I'm startled, you'd make such statement in earnest — it competes with the infamous ones of the past like "Everything that can be invented has been invented" or "Nobody could possibly need more than 640Kb of memory".

There is ample innovation in the insurance industry. Less-regulated auto-insurance companies offer very different policies. Freed from overly-invasive regulation, health-insurers could've offered lower rates to healthier people for one: non-smokers should be paying less than smokers. Those with healthier BMI — less than the fatsos or anorexics. Or those living in healthier areas. Higher deductibles (and co-pays) could lower the monthly premiums dramatically (I know, I had a policy with a $10K annual deductible — spending about $500 a year out of pocket on minor things, while still insured against a truly catastrophic illness. When Massachusetts mandated the maximum of $5K, my premiums nearly doubled). Excluding coverage for elective nonsense like gender-changes is another way to lower prices for all the others.

But we wouldn't even know — because our governments try very hard to keep the competition to the minimum. As if they want us to suffer — to make the privacy-destroying "single-payer" appear palatable. The approach has certainly succeeded with you already...

If delays are acceptably part of the law, why then the veto threat and 100% Democrat party nay vote on the House bill that codifies the delay?

The rules on a federal exchange (not state exchanges), which is what the Congress and their staffs would be participating in, state that there is no subsidy. Since the law specifically moved them from their existing plan (so much for keeping the plan you have) to the federal exchange, one could argue that no federal government payment is allowed. Yes, they are only getting back what they had previously, but that is not what the law said.

We don't want houses on fire, we don't want criminals running around uncaught, and we don't want roads to decay, just because such services are unprofitable.

The thing is that these services that "only the government can run" are often already, in many places, 99% being done by the private sector, for profit.

You can make plenty of money running roads, and there are private enterprises in all forms of transit. The only thing a private firm can't do is tax gasoline. But since we're moving to hybrids and electric vehicles, we'll need to get rid of the gas tax as the primary source of revenue for roads. If we move to a GPS unit in our vehicles, we may as well make all roads tolled and eliminate the gas tax entirely. That way traffic could be dynamically rerouted by price, which would handle congestion far better than it is presently.

Private services dominate law enforcement as well in all areas except SWAT (which we could, arguably, do without), actual arrests and courthouses. *All* the police gear is made by private manufacturers. Most actual policing is done by private security, forensics of all sorts are largely handled by contractors already, all the administrative resources (especially databases) are done by contractors, and all defense attorneys are private practices, and largely paid for by their clients.

The fire marshall inspects buildings to ensure they're up to code, but of course contractors actually make them to code, so that's almost entirely private. Many smaller areas have volunteer firefighters, so you have the non-profit sector assisting the public sector even there. And, of course, there are private fire departments.

Gasland 1 was a complete lie, why not repeat it since no one listened before?

But "fixing" a non-problem is usually deleterious. You make things worse, and you waste capital doing so. It may well be that a warmer planet will be a better one. All the "just so" stories of tipping points and rising oceans are just that: unproven suppositions. Like the South Pacific islands supposedly being swamped by rising seas that actually turn out to be sinking.

For example, more people die from cold than heat. And longer growing seasons in a warmer earth more than offset the reduced arability due to small temperature excursions. Adaptation is required, to be sure, but I bet that's way, way cheaper than the cost of trying to alter climate change, which may well not be anthropomorphic.

The Spiraling costs are caused by a few different factors, of which most are not addressed by ObamaCare directly.

1) Entitlement attitude. Everyone deserves the exact same level of care, regardless of ability to pay. Rich people do not deserve care they can pay for, and poor who cannot pay, deserve the care rich people can afford, but they themselves cannot.

2) Insurance masking the cost of care.

3) Disparate pricing models based on who is paying.

4) Insurance middleman costs

5) Malpractice Lawsuits (jury awards)

None of those are fixed in ObamaCare. In Fact, ObamaCare makes it even more of a regulatory nightmare. Hell to apply for insurance at one of the Insurance Exchanges requires 60+ pages of paperwork by the IRS. Tell me, how does that make healthcare more affordable?

And in spite of your protestations that everything is going honky dory, it isn't

http://www.dpmafoundation.org/physician-attitudes-on-medicine.html
http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/survey-doctors-dropping-out-medicare
http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2013/03/28/california-health-care-costs-to-rise-under-affordable-care-act/
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/06/business/despite-new-health-law-some-see-sharp-rise-in-premiums.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-10/obama-doubles-estimate-to-4-billion-for-health-exchanges.html

OK, fair enough:

• Legality of piggybacking
• No, Having Open WiFi Does Not Make You 'Negligent' And Liable For $10,000 (rhetorical title)
• WiFi Hotspots and Liability Concerns
• Public WiFi Networks Come with Liability Headaches

Short answer: the law is unclear about it and the law varies wildly by state.

Since that Reason article doesn't give the actual citations of the articles it attacks, I can't check them to see what they're attacking, and I can't check to see what kind of letters or commentary the journals published in response to those articles. I know that the New England Journal of Medicine is www.nejm.org. What's the specific article they're referring to? They don't say. They're apparently citing the NEJM from newspaper accounts. It's a collection of unverifiable quotations from their enemies. It's ironic that somebody who complains about the quality of other peoples' research should fail to follow basic scholarship himself.

I remember reading articles in JAMA about guns, and they had long exchanges in the letters section (from pro-gun doctors) debating the pro- and anti-gun side, so I know they're not censored.

They build their argument around a paper delivered by David Bordua David Cowan presented at a 1994 American Society of Criminology meeting. They claim there's a big conspiracy to hide the pro-gun facts. But as far as I can tell with a half-hour Google search, Bordua and Cowan never published that paper -- after 18 years. So it's unconvincing when somebody complains about the scholarship of the NEJM and JAMA, but doesn't publish his own research. There's a huge literature on criminology and related fields for him to publish in. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Kleck#References

The reason that so many doctors have a bias against guns is that they get a lot of people who are severely injured or killed in their ERs. That's standard public health. Instead of trying to treat people after it's too late, you attack the causes of the injury. Doctors have always been political activists. That's their job.

Doctors were complaining during the 1950s and 1960s about the unsafe design of cars, that created needless deaths and injuries -- for example, radio knobs that punctured children's faces in an accident. After a few multi-million dollar product liability lawsuits, the car companies finally changed their designs.

Doctors also have a bias against syphilis. Do you want to ignore the medical literature against syphilis because it's biased against microbes?

In searching for the published article, if any, by David Bordua David Cowan, I found this:

http://heartland.org/sites/all/modules/custom/heartland_migration/files/pdfs/4413.pdf

I stopped reading when I got this far:

Assuming the speciousness and atavistic, insidious malignancy of all opposition to gun control, health advocacy periodicals need not waste space or time on evaluating such views.

The Reason article, this Tennessee law journal article, and the other stuff, is just a long tirade of allegations that the entire medical establishment of bias. It's not acceptable scholarship. It's not even rational logic.

The evidence was showing that guns were far more likely to kill an innocent person than to protect his life. The NRA couldn't answer them with facts and arguments, so they had to cut off the research. That's censorship.

Funny how you hold onto falsified anti-fracking propaganda, yes it was falsified and the people who did that are facing charges for doing so. So you support falsified "science" as long as it matches up with your political views then?

Gasland misled

This link is complete garbage. The journalist Phelim McAleer asks the filmmaker Josh Fox about a segment of Gasland which shows a Colorado resident light his tap water on fire. He asks why Gasland didn't mention that there was a 1976 report of naturally occurring methane in the water in Colorado. Fox replies that one can distinguish biogenic vs thermogenic gas, and those residents said they were not able to light their water on fire before fracking. McAleer then goes on about that report, then Fox says so what, there were also people in NY lighting their water on fire in 1936, but that has nothing to do with fracking in Colorado. Then McAleer is like ZOMG, so this dates back to 1936, why doesn't the movie say that? Fox says because it's irrelevant, then the video cuts trying to make it look like Fox just admitted to a big cover-up. Crap journalism at its worst.

Fox posted this reply to the pseudo-debunking of his film by the gas industry shills.

Funny how you hold onto falsified anti-fracking propaganda, yes it was falsified and the people who did that are facing charges for doing so. So you support falsified "science" as long as it matches up with your political views then?

Gasland misled

I guess you fall right in line with AWG as well, seeing as Phil Jones deleted research data instead of risking having it peer-reviewed as well, but I'm sure your all good with that as well since it is also a lie that will probably line up with your political views.

I've noticed in the last few years that the truth no longer matters in the US. Its all about having the "correct" policical views and doing whatever it takes to smear the people telling truth that doesn't line up with that.

I claim that "skeptics" generally do accept the possibility that atmospheric composition affects planetary cooling rates. In particular, I claim this with regard to the following people commonly regarded by outsiders as "skeptics": Steve McIntyre, Ross McKitrick, Anthony Watts. I think you will find it very difficult to find some "skeptics" who do not "accept the possibility that atmospheric composition affects planetary cooling rates".

But if you really think "skeptics" have been claiming it's not possible for atmospheric composition to affect planetary cooling rates, it shouldn't be hard for you to name a couple specific skeptics who have done this. In short: name two.

The people that someone at Heritage picked (unabomber, castro...) to claim "I believe in global warming" in ads didn't simply mean by it that "atmospheric composition affects planetary cooling rates". When these (and other!) alarmists say "I believe in global warming" what they believe is that global warming is a crisis that demands immediate action. But to see it a crisis, you need to think that net feedbacks are strongly positive. Otherwise it's just an interesting curiosity.

The standard line among the denizens of ClimateAudit.org is that yes, CO2 is a greenhouse gas but the litany overstates the case for strong positive feedbacks and the case that current temperatures are "unprecedented".

Of course, the problem is that there are numerous studies that show that traffic cameras do not "save lives," and go on to explain that the changes made to intersections to support them actually make those intersections more dangerous.

http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2010/03/08/red-light-cameras-pose-danger-safety-studies-find

Red light cameras decrease safety at the intersection primarily because they shorten the yellow light interval, and increasing the yellow light interval is what would actually make the intersection safer. The camera operators actually *require* a reduction of the yellow light interval, a situation definitively proven to case more accidents. States like Ohio have actually banned the use of red light cameras because of this. The operator's intentions are bad enough that if a city increases the yellow light interval to a safe level, the companies that own the red light cameras will actually remove them. They are a money grab and have nothing to do with safety or saving lives.

Speed cameras are a different matter, because depending upon the state, the highways they're installed on may have truly reasonable speed limits. There's still some abuse there, I'm sure, but not to the extent red light cameras are abused.

Heartland claims Earlier this evening, Peter Gleick, a prominent figure in the global warming movement, confessed to stealing electronic documents from The Heartland Institute in an attempt to discredit and embarrass a group that disagrees with his views.

In fact, he made no such confession. What he said is: At the beginning of 2012, I received an anonymous document in the mail describing what appeared to be details of the Heartland Institute's climate program strategy.

Then, he went to the effort of attempting to verify the authenticity and accuracy of the documents by pretending to be someone else and asking for information directly from Heartland: The materials the Heartland Institute sent to me confirmed many of the facts in the original document, including especially their 2012 fundraising strategy and budget.

So, he did pretend to be someone else, but he stole nothing. If the original documents were stolen (which is pure speculation), it was by someone other than Gleick. Impersonating someone else is certainly nothing to be taken lightly, but it's a well established technique used by reporter and investigators when using your real name may impede or alter your access to the information. Whether a crime was committed requires more details than given. But there is no evidence that he stole anything, and as such, he may have a slander or libel claim against Heartland for their statement. IANAL.

The Heartland Institute didn't find it necessary for following this protocol for commenting on leaked documents when it came to Climategate.

I wonder if the Hearland is going to revise it's positionon the release of the so called "Climategate" emails.

"The release of these documents creates an opportunity for reporters, academics, politicians, and others who relied on the IPCC to form their opinions about global warming to stop and reconsider their position. The experts they trusted and quoted in the past have been caught red-handed plotting to conceal data, hide temperature trends that contradict their predictions, and keep critics from appearing in peer-reviewed journals. This is new and real evidence that they should examine and then comment on publicly." .

Apparently it's different when it happens to them:

We believe their actions constitute civil and possibly criminal offenses for which we plan to pursue charges and collect payment for damages, including damages to our reputation.

http://heartland.org/press-releases/2012/02/15/heartland-institute-responds-stolen-and-fake-documents

I wonder if the Hearland is going to revise it's positionon the release of the so called "Climategate" emails.

"The release of these documents creates an opportunity for reporters, academics, politicians, and others who relied on the IPCC to form their opinions about global warming to stop and reconsider their position. The experts they trusted and quoted in the past have been caught red-handed plotting to conceal data, hide temperature trends that contradict their predictions, and keep critics from appearing in peer-reviewed journals. This is new and real evidence that they should examine and then comment on publicly." .

Apparently it's different when it happens to them:

We believe their actions constitute civil and possibly criminal offenses for which we plan to pursue charges and collect payment for damages, including damages to our reputation.

http://heartland.org/press-releases/2012/02/15/heartland-institute-responds-stolen-and-fake-documents

The main document is a fake and several others have been altered. Didn't see it in the discussion. Thought I'd mention it. http://heartland.org/press-releases/2012/02/15/heartland-institute-responds-stolen-and-fake-documents

The Heartland Institute has posted a notice on their website that the doc the Guardian published is a fake:

One document, titled “Confidential Memo: 2012 Heartland Climate Strategy,” is a total fake apparently intended to defame and discredit The Heartland Institute. It was not written by anyone associated with The Heartland Institute. It does not express Heartland’s goals, plans, or tactics. It contains several obvious and gross misstatements of fact.

We respectfully ask all activists, bloggers, and other journalists to immediately remove all of these documents and any quotations taken from them, especially the fake “climate strategy” memo and any quotations from the same, from their blogs, Web sites, and publications, and to publish retractions.

The individuals who have commented so far on these documents did not wait for Heartland to confirm or deny the authenticity of the documents. We believe their actions constitute civil and possibly criminal offenses for which we plan to pursue charges and collect payment for damages, including damages to our reputation. We ask them in particular to immediately remove these documents and all statements about them from the blogs, Web sites, and publications, and to publish retractions.

Heartland also claims that some genuine documents were stolen and then altered.

So, do we have another Dan Rather Memogate here?

Seriously? You find $6.5 million possibly budgeted to skeptical defenders of science, and you expect me extrapolate that to equal the *billions* siphoned off by warmists and alarmists over the years?

Oh, and for the record, it looks like a bunch of those docs were doctored:

http://heartland.org/press-releases/2012/02/15/heartland-institute-responds-stolen-and-fake-documents

What will you think of the "leakers" of these docs if the juiciest bits are falsified?

I wonder if the Hearland is going to revise it's positionon the release of the so called "Climategate" emails.

"The release of these documents creates an opportunity for reporters, academics, politicians, and others who relied on the IPCC to form their opinions about global warming to stop and reconsider their position. The experts they trusted and quoted in the past have been caught red-handed plotting to conceal data, hide temperature trends that contradict their predictions, and keep critics from appearing in peer-reviewed journals. This is new and real evidence that they should examine and then comment on publicly."

I must have missed the link where they correct this and admit the entire Climategate "controversy" was proven false, and that no deliberate manipulation of data was actually found. I am sure they are still working on that release...

I used to butt heads with Jim Lakely on a small, multi-author politically slanted blog he contributed to. I was friends with him briefly on FB, but I couldn't take his near constant right-wing/libertarian rantings. By all accounts he's an intelligent guy, but he has some of the craziest ideas. He's a really good fit for that organization. When he got that job, the action at the blog dried up, which was unfortunate. I had a lot of fun debating there, as one of only about 3 active left-leaners.

And Adam Smith

“The rich should contribute to the public expense not only in proportion to their revenue,” Smith believed, “but something more than in that proportion.”

http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2003/11/01/adam-smith-taxes

CFLs are also toxic: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7431198

Furthermore, when the ban was enacted, in order to produce CFLs at a price people wanted them at, light bulb companies simply moved their factories to China.

Thank God we have the government telling us what to do!

I agree with you about GE's benefiting from the ban. Of course, they already were selling light bulbs, so what switch to CFLs got them I'm not clear on. Perhaps they are cheaper to make but sell for more? I know that GE closed the last domestic incandescent light bulb factory, so presumably there is a labor cost savings to them.

As for your statements about GE's ties to the Obama administration and the Democratic party, I'll just note that the law banning CFLs is titled "The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007". It might be worthwhile to recall that in 2007, George W. Bush was president and he signed it into law. President Bush supported the bill and it was part of the slate of initiatives he laid out in his State of the Union address that year.

I'm no climate scientist, but as I understand it, there is a lot of data that is showing the climate changing. As I understand well above the 95% confidence level.

The real issue is how much of that is man made.

Well, that is true. However, an increasing number of Americans don't even understand that global warming is occurring at all. In a 2005 Fox News poll, 23% said they didn't believe GW was happening (or perhaps didn't know). In a 2010 Virginia Commonwealth University poll it had risen to 29%. And 49% of respondents to the VCU poll think "many scientists have serious doubts about [the evidence for Global Warming].

A CBS poll (same link as above) also shows a trend of Americans thinking GW won't have a serious impact, from 19% in Feb '09 to 24% in April '10 (thought the margin of error is 3 points). Further down on that same page is a Gallup poll. In 1997, 9% of respondents thought GW would "never" be a problem. In 2010 it's up to 19%.

There is a serious effort to portray this as a non-issue. People are being lead to believe that it's not even happening naturally, and that is really dangerous. Man-made or not, global warming/climate change is real. Even the conservative Heartland Institute cites a poll of climate scientists where 82% said that GW/CC is real.

It's important to have a serious scientific debate about the human impact on the environment and the climate. It's doubly important that this debate not be political, which is what it has become.

http://www.heartland.org/policybot/results/25591/Maryland_Gov_OMalley_Wants_to_Jam_Prison_Cell_Phones.html

quick search - the FCC has denied requests for a waiver so far.

Yes, I've read that paper, but Menne appears to not be an honest broker. Not only did he use the data that Watts stopped updating publicly (to avoid ad hoc analysis) but he apparently deliberately excluded Watts from the article process.

The fact that I saw a false premise in the first paragraph of the paper (reviewing it again just now) didn't improve my opinion of Menne et al.

I believe the "adjustment" process is fatally flawed (hence my "make stuff up" link in my prior post). Smearing the data around doesn't make it better (side note: my background includes physics simulations of rigorously tested data, so I have at least some experience with data quality like this), and when there simply isn't any data, fiddling with the gaussian isn't going to make the data appear.

On top of all this, NOAA and NCDC appear to have colluded to hammer out talking points regarding Watts' "Is the U.S. Surface Temperature Record Reliable?"

Climate scientists simply cannot be trusted until all data and methodology are public and can be replicated by statisticians outside of the field.

Since we're talking about NASA here, just look at how environmental concerns already (arguably) doomed two Space Shuttles. I have nothing against environmentally motivated improvements, provided the new solutions aren't rushed into place without proving their viability against the track record of the old proven component it's replacing.

That article is politically motivated BS. You should never rely on ideologues who want to abolish all government regulation for accurate reports about the effects of regulations.

Go google the actual accident reports on Columbia and Challenger. You can download them free. The Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) report is particularly detailed. You will find that while switching to CFC free foam wasn't completely trouble free, it definitely was not the cause of the accident. If I recall correctly from the last time I debunked this a few years ago, the CAIB considered that possibility, but found that on the tank in question, the large chunk of foam which put the fatal hole in Columbia's wing leading edge broke free from an area which had been sprayed using the original CFC formulation. (They didn't switch over in one fell swoop, you see.)

Also IIRC the CAIB more or less decided that the Shuttle was fundamentally flawed in that it is impossible for any foam formulation and/or application technique to be safe. It's almost impossible to 100% prevent bits and pieces of it from shedding, and the shuttle's TPS (thermal protection system aka the tiles, blankets, and reinforced carbon-carbon pieces) is delicate and easy to damage. The only safe shuttle design would be one which put the orbiter upwind of any cryogenic fuel tanks. (The whole reason the foam's there at all is to prevent ice formation, because ice impacts on the TPS would be much much worse than foam.)

Similar things apply with respect to the asbestos story on the Challenger O-Rings. It's been a while longer since I saw that one trotted out and I think it's even more bogus, but I don't really have time to look it up. You should though if you're going to be linking that website.

Who are fairly averse to risk and bold updates.

You say that like it's a bad thing. When designing commercial aircraft, I don't mind that aircraft engineers typically take very slow and deliberate steps. Slow and steady advancement saves lives.

Since we're talking about NASA here, just look at how environmental concerns already (arguably) doomed two Space Shuttles. I have nothing against environmentally motivated improvements, provided the new solutions aren't rushed into place without proving their viability against the track record of the old proven component it's replacing. The rush to introduce the latest and greatest must be tempered against the risk of ANY change in a field where the slightest flaw or miscalculation can result in a tragically fatal outcome.

Here is a citation with several citations within it. Here is another and yet another..

I'm willing to bet that most high dollar educations didn't involve simple google skills as it took me all of a couple of minutes to find those references.

Here is a PDF report that ties a bunch of numbers together as late as 2008. Unfortunately, it's in book form so you will probable need to print it and assemble the pages to keep the lines straight with the tables.

I have absolutely no problem with researching new technology. I AM opposed to people who support any proposal that comes along that has to do with global warming. I object to cap and trade, which will just be a big windfall for wall street traders, and I object to the Copenhagen idea of transferring billions of dollars to developing countries. Come up with something reasonable and I will support it.

Also, the problem with the observations you mention is that they are often not related to the global temperature at all, but rather to local effects. For example, the increased glacier melting of Kilimanjaro has been shown to not be related to global warming at all. So when you talk about these things, you have to look at why they are happening, there isn't enough of that going on. The plural of anecdote is not data, etc.

Decide for yourself!
http://www.heartland.org/books/PDFs/SurfaceStations.pdf

Major report by Anthony Watts on junk surface stations
"Executive Summary: Global warming is one of the most serious issues of our times. Some experts claim the rise in temperature during the past century was "unprecedented" and proof that immediate action to reduce human greenhouse gas emissions must begin. Other experts say the warming was very modest and the case for action has yet to be made.

The reliability of data used to document temperature trends is of great importance in this debate. We can't know for sure if global warming is a problem if we can't trust the data.

The official record of temperatures in the continental United States comes from a network of 1,221 climate-monitoring stations overseen by the National Weather Service, a department of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Until now, no one had ever conducted a comprehensive review of the quality of the measurement environment of those stations.

During the past few years I recruited a team of more than 650 volunteers to visually inspect and photographically document more than 860 of these temperature stations. We were shocked by what we found.

We found stations located next to the exhaust fans of air conditioning units, surrounded by asphalt parking lots and roads, on blistering-hot rooftops, and near sidewalks and buildings that absorb and radiate heat. We found 68 stations located at wastewater treatment plants, where the process of waste digestion causes temperatures to be higher than in surrounding areas.

In fact, we found that 89 percent of the stations - nearly 9 of every 10 - fail to meet the National Weather Service's own siting requirements that stations must be 30 meters (about 100 feet) or more away from an artificial heating or radiating/reflecting heat source.

In other words, 9 of every 10 stations are likely reporting higher or rising temperatures because they are badly sited.

It gets worse. We observed that changes in the technology of temperature stations over time also has caused them to report a false warming trend. We found major gaps in the data record that were filled in with data from nearby sites, a practice that propagates and compounds errors. We found that adjustments to the data by both NOAA and another government agency, NASA, cause recent temperatures to look even higher.

The conclusion is inescapable: The U.S. temperature record is unreliable.

The errors in the record exceed by a wide margin the purported rise in temperature of 0.7 C (about 1.2 F) during the twentieth century. Consequently, this record should not be cited as evidence of any trend in temperature that may have occurred across the U.S. during the past century. Since the U.S. record is thought to be "the best in the world," it follows that the global database is likely similarly compromised and unreliable.

This report presents actual photos of more than 100 temperature stations in the U.S., many of them demonstrating vividly the siting issues we found to be rampant in the network. Photographs of all 865 stations that have been surveyed so far can be found at www.surfacestations.org, where station photos can be browsed by state or searched for by name." "Is the U.S. Temperature Record Reliable?" h/t Roger Pielke Sr.

You claimed that burning wood was "banned in California" but it turns out that burning wood is restricted (not banned) in a certain part of California, for a few days per year.

Here are some more links then:

link, link and link.

Specifically note the "an end to the familiar, open-front hearth in new homes and remodels." If that is not a 100% ban then what is it? These are local regulations, but they are spreading fast.

Also note that the Central Valley is an agricultural region with farms miles away from each other, and only few cities.

I hope that clears the confusion as much as it is humanly possible. The executive summary is simple: for many locales it is illegal to install a wood-burning fireplace, and if you already have one it is illegal to use it on some days (in winter - just when you need it.)

Again, this is just an example of how deep the government control can go. We don't need to worry about their justifications. Today they may be valid - to keep the air clean. Tomorrow they may be bogus - to reduce the carbon footprint. Or maybe later they will tax you for your car mileage, separately from the gas tax that you already pay. Once governments take the power to regulate your life they seldom let it go.

Teaching kids is an important job, and it's not a bad idea to leave it to people who know how to do it.

http://www.heartland.org/policybot/results/16494/How_Do_I_Fire_an_Inept_Teacher_in_New_York_City_Schools.html

You said it far better than I ever could......
NY spends in excess of 20 mm USD per year on these teachers.....