Bishop Hill Heartland docs leaked
Feb 15, 2012 Climate: Sceptics Some documents have been leaked from the Heartland Institute, which detail its funding of various sceptics - Idso, Carter and Singer - together with some funding for Anthony Watts' temperature stations project. They're stolen documents, I tell you, stolen!
There are apparently nine or ten documents, which will no doubt be scanned for evidence of malfeasance. I haven't seen any serious allegations as yet.
There's coverage all over the place. Try here for starters.
Bishop Hill
Anthony Watts has sent details of the project that Heartland was involved in and his interactions with the Guardian on the subject. This I think is Heartland's description of the project.
Weather Stations Project
Every few months, weathermen report that a temperature record – either high or low – has been broken somewhere in the U.S. This is not surprising, since weather is highly variable and reliable instrument records date back less than 100 years old. Regrettably, news of these broken records is often used by environmental extremists as evidence that human emissions are causing either global warming or the more ambiguous “climate change.”Anthony Watts, a meteorologist who hosts WattsUpwithThat.com, one of the most popular and influential science blogs in the world, has documented that many of the temperature stations relied on by weathermen are compromised by heat radiating from nearby buildings, machines, or paved surfaces. It is not uncommon for these stations to over-state temperatures by 3 or 4 degrees or more, enough to set spurious records.
Because of Watts’ past work exposing flaws in the current network of temperature stations (work that The Heartland Institute supported and promoted), the National Aeronautics and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the government agency responsible for maintaining temperature stations in the U.S., has designated a new network of higher-quality temperature stations that meet its citing specifications. Unfortunately, NOAA doesn’t widely publicize data from this new network, and puts raw data in spreadsheets buried on one of its Web sites.
Anthony Watts proposes to create a new Web site devoted to accessing the new temperature data from NOAA’s web site and converting them into easy-to-understand graphs that can be easily found and understood by weathermen and the general interested public. Watts has deep expertise in Web site design generally and is well-known and highly regarded by weathermen and meteorologists everywhere. The new site will be promoted heavily at WattsUpwithThat.com. Heartland has agreed to help Anthony raise $88,000 for the project in 2011.
The Anonymous Donor has already pledged $44,000. We’ll seek to raise the balance.
And here's Anthony's response to questions from Suzanne Goldenberg at the Guardian:
Heartland simply helped me find a donor for funding a special project having to do with presenting some new NOAA surface data in a public friendly graphical form, something NOAA themselves is not doing, but should be. I approached them in the fall of 2011 asking for help, on this project not the other way around.
They do not regularly fund me nor my WUWT website, I take no salary from them of any kind.
It is simply for this special project requiring specialized servers, ingest systems, and plotting systems. They also don't tell me what the project should look like, I came up with the idea and the design. The NOAA data will be displayed without any adjustments to allow easy side-by-side comparisons of stations, plus other graphical representations output 24/7/365. Doing this requires programming, system design, and bandwidth, which isn't free and I could not do on my own. Compare the funding I asked for initially to get it started to the millions some other outfits (such as CRU) get in the UK for studies that then end up as a science paper behind a publishers paywall, makign the public pay again. My project will be a free public service when finished.
And then this:
DeSmog, as part of their public relations for hire methodology to demonize skeptics, will of course try to find nefarious motives for this project. But there simply are none here. It's something that needs doing because NOAA hasn't made this new data available in a user friendly visual format.
For example, here's a private company website that tracks highs and low records using NOAA data:
http://mapcenter.hamweather.com/records/yesterday/us.html <http://mapcenter.hamweather.com/records/yesterday/us.html>
NOAA doesn't make any kind of presentation like that either, which is why such things are often done by private ventures.
Golly, aren't sceptics wicked? I wonder why the Guardian didn't mention Anthony's comments?
Reader Comments (123)
'They're stolen documents, I tell you, stolen!'.
Just like the ClimateGate emails. Was similar outrage expressed over them on this site? I haven't time to check and am just wondering!
Alleagra - you need to understand irony.
"With tiny budgets like $310 million, $100 million, and $95 million respectively, how can lovable underdogs like Greenpeace, Sierra Club, and NRDC *ever* hope to compete with mighty Heartland's $6.5 million? "
Tom Nelson's headline on the Heartland affair. \
http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/2012/02/with-tiny-budgets-like-310-million-100.html
These people are funded? I am shocked, I tell you, shocked!
Alleagra - His Grace was being ironic, and poking fun at the reaction of the alarmists when the climategate emails were leaked.
Storm meet tea cup
Another opportunity for Warmists to display their hypocrisy. As if we needed one.
They've found the smoking gun of funding! Up until now, I've been figuring the Heartland just created money out of the thin air like the Bank of England.
Man oh Man there will be so many enquiries!
Quotes "certain" to me made:
"We refuse to look at them. They are stolen. " James Randerson, the Guardian
Dr Evil: "Here's the plan. We get the warhead and we hold the world ransom for... one milion dollars." And the Heartland Institute has six and a half times that! Golly gosh, no wonder the likes of Greenpeace and WWF are quaking in their boots.
Quotes "certain" to me made part II:
"It is just not right that people are funded for PR purposes by outside interests. " Bob Ward, FGS.
Alleagra: Wow! You're right! Nobody seems to have ever said the climategate emails were "stolen" on this site.
You appear to have had an irony bipass operation, I was wondering if they can be reversed, can they do you know? I only ask on behalf of Mrs geronimo, who unlike you didn't need the operation, but could certainly do with the reversal,
Wow "Heartland Insider" giving us the news that there have been efforts by sceptic groups to "Dupe children" and "cultivate Revkin" who knew the parallels would be so close ;)
Looking forward to analyse the outflow of this, definitely a good thing to have more information I'm certainly going to be more interested in a meta study and am going to track the upcoming column inches and journalistic bravery in the eventual analysis ;)
The truth is out. It was Big heartland institute oil who gave collosal amounts of money to the SSP. Oh the criminalityof it all.
/ sarc off / irony off
Warmists, like all Leftists who stroll about on the high moral ground, usually get there having had a hypocrisy by-pass operation. Their high moral ground outrage about their own 'stolen' emails will be airbrushed as they rain down contempt on Heartland funded deniers, (evidence arising from equally 'stolen' emails), and Heartland itself.
@the leopard in the basement
..and I am already writing my grant application for a meta study of all the meta studies. We will attempt to discover the funding sources of all the meta studies and see if we can link these directly or indirectly to the phases of the moon, the global temperature anomaly or the number of words uttered (by broadcast date) in every episode of Coronation Street since its debut when I were a lad.....
Should be a totally gripping project. Hang on for a roller-coaster ride......
Having read Suzanne Goldenburgs article it appears that she has a major concern that the Heartland Institute is funded by "one or two wealthy individuals".
I wonder if she has similar concerns about the funding given by Jeremy Grantham and David Suzuki and many others to causes that they believe in ?
@Latimer Alder
Yes, however I fully anticipate that it will be an eventual study by the occasional visiting professor of applied narcotics at the University of Please Yourself, California which will become the touchstone paper that will finally bury skepticism of anything for good ;)
We need Climategate 3 to put the mob back into place.
Suzanne Goldenberg’s report in the Guardian says:
“The Valentine's Day exposé of Heartland is reminscent to a certain extent of the hacking of emails from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit in 2009. Those documents helped sink the UN's climate summit later that year”.
Hold your fire on the irony and let the Guardian fall deeper into the trap.
'Alleagra - you need to understand irony.:'
A fair cop! I fell hook line and sinker for that one! And there's me (English, believe it or not) thinking that Americans don't get irony.
The Guardian only exists because of a charitable trust, and some more profitable titles.
If it had to let its current editorial policy guide its "profitability" it would have sunk long long ago.
Without funding the Guardian would die.
But that is different of course...
Bob Ward and George Monbiot are in spasms over this passage:
"His effort will focus on providing curriculum that shows that the topic of climate change is controversial and
uncertain - two key points that are effective at dissuading teachers from teaching science"
George describes this as:
"Among Heartland Inst's objectives: "dissuading teachers from teaching science." I kid you not."
https://twitter.com/#!/GeorgeMonbiot/status/169713162696921089
George excitedly fails in his interpretation - the report *asserts* that teachers are dissuaded from teaching science (as opposed to catechism I guess) *because* the subject is controversial, and aims to counter that fact.
Buffoon.
Alleagra; one small extra step: Bishop Hill is a UK blog publishing out of Scotland.
Re; Geofchambers
So according to the guardian the Heartland's documents being released is an "exposé" and the UEA's emails being released is "hacking".
No double standards there then.
Why do 'sceptics' here trust the Heatland institute? They are a lobby firm in the same way Green NGOs lobby government, one funded by corporate membership and the others by public individuals. Interested parties for both sides of the argument may have valid arguments [good for Heartland to fund an open access database] but swallow one instead of the other because they are on *your* side doesn't make you a sceptic.
Re: iwannabeasceptic
What makes you think sceptics here trust the Heartland Institute?
Funny thing when you look at the numbers , there actual tiny and no where near the vast amounts of ‘big oil funding ‘ which is claimed to0 exist . Even taken at face value compared to the money Hansen pulls in or just the 150,000 St Gore charges for a ‘visit’ , this really is peanuts. So you have to say , AGW skeptics are doing a poor job of making cash compared to AGW alarmists .
Re: iwannabeasceptic
Just to be clear, I don't trust the following:
The Heartland Institute,
The GWPF,
The Grantham Institute,
The UEA,
Greenpeace,
WWF,
Any organisation with climate change, global warming, green, or environment in its title.
Many many more.
Following this story round the internet, already its clear that the sophists of the Left are making the case that this bunch of stolen/leaked/hacked emails are of a totally different order to Climategate stolen/leaked/hacked emails therefore it is right and proper to discuss them. A positional relativism akin to Greenpeace's demanding of Michaels emails being OK (and quickly released by UVa) whereas Cucinelli's demanding of Mann's not OK (and strenuously being resisted by UVa). In short the moral high ground of Leftist ethics reduces to, "Whatever supports our position, regardless, is good; whatever harms our position, regardless, is bad". Intellectual honesty, truth, whatever, just bourgeois conceits. And that ethical position of course that spills over into the 'science'. Fiddling a few temps here, ignoring facts which undermine the case there etc etc, so what? We're Progressives, don't you know?
IWBS
I always assume there is a vested interest. As long as I can see what it is then I'm happy to then take a look at the argument and run it through the sanity checker, then the credentiometer. When I can't see an obvious interest, then I go looking for that first. I'm usually very suspicious of imposingly named groups (Centre for This That and The Other, or Institute for Global Obfuscation or somesuch). In such cases I find the paper trail of ownership and funding usually quite illuminating, as it more often than not leads to my pocket.
Bob Ward can't complain about pressure and lobby groups funded by individuals, as, blow me down, he's a paid advocate of a pressure and lobby group funded by an individual.
Perhaps this will go some way to putting to rest the idea that sceptics are well organised and well funded. Which is especially laughable in comparison to the amount of taxpayer funding, as well as NGO funding, of alarmism.
Information should be free.
Bill
Well put. If there was an upvote button, I'd use it. :-)
If commenters here are interested in getting their views over to a wider public, I suggest they wait till Monbiot or Ward explode on the Guardian’s Environment pages, and then drop on them like a ton of - well, Guardian readers (80% of whom are sceptics, judging by the “recommends”).
I know how tempting it is to concentrate on the irony - to point out that no-one at Heartland has suggested destroying data or getting editors sacked, or rejoiced at the death of a colleague. What they’ve done, apparently, is pay people to write stuff. Just as Jeremy Grantham and Auto Dealer pay Ward and Monbiot to write stuff. But will anyone in the mainstream media put the Heartland stuff and the Ward/Monbiot stuff back to back and see which is right?
Ben PIle at
http://www.climate-resistance.org/
has collected Bob Ward’s tweets on the subject. His comments are spot on, as usual.
SHOCK HORROR - Climate skeptics support climate skepticism.
Lets get all the information into the public domain in order to have an open debate by the protagonists.
Lets see Mann's emails. Lets see who funds GWPF. Lets have an open IPCC process. Lets see the links between green groups and climate scientists, the media and politicians. Lets see who is funding who.
@terrys
it is heartening [!] to here that, but I disagree with the reference to UEA, which is governed by strict charter along with the rest of UK Uni. The other 'demon' Monbiot was one the first to criticise the lack of openness of [1 department] UEA and championed free access to scientific papers. It is publishing houses who put up paywalls for people to access information the publishers received for free.
OMG my typos are epidemic today, must be low on blod sugar! here=hear, 'one of * the first'
@mac- we have seen Mann's emails and they really are dull, academics discussing stuff academics talk about, the only way to make them fruity was to leave out context and half the sentence. But, yes open access to relationships in such high profile bodies is essential, which was the *only* issue in climategate. However non mass membership based organisations tend to be far more shady and the academic system does need a good clean across all disciplines.
I have funded Steve McIntyre (£50) and the Bish (£10) in the past. Small donations I know, apologies if this causes embarrassment.
To my eternal shame I have given more in the dark and dim past to environmental groups. Never again.
Any charity that has a policy on climate change I avoid like the plague. I only support local charities now - small overhead, money goes to source.
I must admit I was mildly disappointed not to have been listed alongside Andy Revkin and Judy Curry as someone "who has a well-known antipathy for some of the more extreme AGW communicators such as Romm...." :-)
However, assuming this document is genuine, the two quotes in the 2012 Heartland Climate Strategy that are definitely quite revealing and important are:
and:
As someone who considers it completely acceptable to question and discuss mainstream views in an open and honest manner, and indeed as someone who actively promotes such discussion even in the face of advice against this, these points are of key concern as they appear to be counter to the idea of genuine, constructive discussion.
Of course many people will tell me that is naive to expect otherwise!
One of the reasons I go on Bishop Hill and Climate Audit is that opposing voices are not kept out, and that a proper discussion can (usually) be had. I hope fans of these blogs will take note of the apparent strategy by Heartland to oppose free debate and simply try to cause damage, rather than engaging in genuine discussion.
(And yes, before you ask, I do think that "suppression of opposing voices" and "undermining" would be wrong no matter which "side" does it.)
However, we don't seem to have had a response from Heartland yet, so it will be interesting to see what they say on the appearance that they actively set out to "undermine" and "keep opposing voices out".
For once I agree with RB we need an open and honest debate.
That can only proceed if all information, relevant or not, is in the open. That includes scientific, financial, political and ideological links involving all the protagonists.
To get the ball rolling.
Richard Betts have you links with green groups and have you made donations to such groups?
iwannabea,
You are trolling. You don't believe what you write.
Re: iwannabeasceptic
The only example I have seen of "half the sentence being left out" is when it referred to the health of family member and the leaker censored it. Perhaps you could provide a single example of half a sentence being left that does not fall into a similar category?
As for context, the full email chain is there in many instances and provides the full context. Those whose emails have been released have had ample opportunity to provide an alternative context and have failed to do so.
Just doing some back checks.
I think I've given more money to GreenPeace than the WWF and FoE (I'm bad), but I've given more to the Red Cross, Save The Children, Médecins Sans Frontières and Amnesty International (I'm not that bad).
Richard, I think you will find that the words "undermine" and "keep opposing voices out" are just the daily jargon commonly used and contextually understood by all those in think-tankery; just as 'trick' and 'hide the decline' are common and contextually sensible in academia, and therefore of no particular moment whatever. .
No one can support phrases and words such as "it is important to keep opposing voices out" and "undermine"; just as no one can support the use of phrases and words such as "hide the decline" and "trick".
We need an honest and open debate, and that can only be done by having all the information in the public domain.
Richard, everyone knows that the NIPCC report is not an unbiased objective review of the science. It only exists because of the failure of the IPCC to be balanced and objective. It makes it clear in its preface that the report was produced out of concern that the IPCC provokes an irrational fear of AGW based on incomplete and faulty science. So there's not as much of a story here as some are claiming.
Richard, everyone knows that the NIPCC report is not an unbiased objective review of the science. It only exists because of the failure of the IPCC to be balanced and objective. It makes it clear in its preface that the report was produced out of concern that the IPCC provokes an irrational fear of AGW based on incomplete and faulty science. So there's not as much of a story here as some are claiming.