Bishop Hill Who leaked the Hintze correspondence?
There is some fascinating web-sleuthing going on in the comments on the Hintze email post, as readers try to work out who leaked the correspondence to the Guardian. Some clues have come from the correspondence itself, redacted versions of which have been published by the Guardian.
The original letter reveals that the requester was involved in the relationship between climate and health:
We assume that our previous letter to you, attached, somehow slipped your attention as we realise that you are really busy and may have been away. We do assure you that we will not be writing to you repeatedly.
However, because of the urgent need for action on climate change and health, illustrated by events in the last few months, we are taking the liberty of contacting you again to request support for the XXX.
And also that they had a representative at the Durban climate confrerence.
We would be happy to provide you with any other information you require, set up a conference call with you, or meet face-to-face. XXX is will be attending the Durban conference on Climate Change and Health in December and XXX will be in the UK again in February 2012.
Some googling suggested one plausible source of the letter as being the Climate and Health Council, an offshoot of the British Medical Journal.
Now, Barry Woods Maurizio Morabito has discovered this:
The Climate and Health Council supports Nasa scientist James Hansen as he joins the campaign to uncover secret funders bankrolling climate sceptic Nigel Lawson and his lobbying think-tank (Climate experts back unveiling of Lawson thinktank donor, 23 January). The public may finally discover who is secretly influencing UK climate policy – contrary to scientific consensus – today (27 January), when the Information Rights Tribunal hears this key freedom of information case. Some anti-climate lobbyists routinely misrepresent and cast doubt on the work of climate scientists. Although Lawson and his Global Warming Policy Foundation have been discredited and attacked by numerous scientists and senior politicians, his thinktank continues to receive significant coverage, wrongfully distorting the public and policy debate over climate change.
Well, well, well.
The signatories of the letter were:
Dr Fiona Godlee Editor-in-chief, British Medical Journal
Dr. Richard Horton Editor-in-Chief, The Lancet
Professor Ian Roberts Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health
Professor Hugh Montgomery Professor of Intensive Care Medicine
Professor Anthony Costello Professor of International Child Health
Rachel Stancliffe Director, Centre for Sustainable Healthcare
Dr. Robin Stott Co-chair, Climate and Health Council
Maya Tickell-Painter Director, Medsin Healthy Planet Campaign
I've written to Dr Godlee to ask for a comment on this post.
Bishop Hill
Maurizio Morabito has found an unredacted version of the letter to Hintze. See here.
Interestingly, the financial values, which are now visible, are denominated in $. There is much talk of Australian politics too:
The carbon price legislation before the Australian parliament still faces much political and public opposition even though Australia is one of the heaviest carbon emitters in the world. Meanwhile, the capricious climate and extreme weather events in Australia this year, including severe flooding, especially Queensland, and ferocious bushfires in WA, make it clear we cannot afford to delay preventive action further. Drought and famine in Sub-Saharan Africa and floods again in Pakistan illustrate the disadvantage of developing countries and the imperative of more help from the developed world.
Does this point perhaps to an approach from Australia's Climate and Health Alliance instead? They were at Durban too.
Bishop Hill
Leopard in the comments notes this from the CaHA website:
Demonstrating Better Practice: scoping paper on developing a set of criteria for voluntary accreditation of health care institutions in the area of environmental sustainability.
Which looks a bit like this from the begging letter (emphasis added).
Breakdown of this funding need is:
Website = XXXPolicy/position papers = XXX
Health effects of fossil fuels report = XXX
Scoping paper on voluntary accreditation for health care organisations = XXX
Administrative and operational costs, including office and phone = XXX
I'll try contacting CaHA to see what they have to say.
Bishop Hill
Fiona Godlee responds as follows:
There is no truth in your allegation that the letter in this case came from the Climate and Health Council. I am surprised that you would speculate publicly about this without first checking with a member of the council's executive. We are firmly committed to transparency but were in no way involved in this episode.
Reader Comments (135)
28 March, 2012 at 5.21 Martin A
Sir Walter Scott says it best: “Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive”
Gareth (Mar 28, 2012 at 4:42 PM)
The guy at SkS who wanted to void the charitable status of the GWPF was “logicman”, who identifies himself on the author page as Patrick Lockerby. (He has a blog at http://www.science20.com where articles include “why I am Peter Gleick”). He was asking for help in formulating his legal demand only 7 weeks ago, so I don’t think he can be connected with Brendan Montague’s effort.
Gareth
Brendan Montague won a claim in the High Court for a judicial review into the Met's handling of his allegations that his phone was hacked. Perhaps he was a 'litigant in person'.
http://www.journalism.co.uk/news/journalist-wins-bid-to-challenge-met-on-phone-hacking-despite-threadbare-claim/s2/a544280/
"Sorry if I don't fall over in amazement at that. But I don't move in your circles and what you have said is meaningless "
The GWPF not being funded by Big Oil is 100% straw man, as it was Lawson's own answer to the question "Who is funding the GWPF?" However, the funder turns out to be the guy who backed Adam Werrity, who was in turn American Legislative Exchange Council's stooge unlawfully embedded in Parliament, which in turn is part of State Policy Network. Tea Party crazy. No wonder Atlantic Bridge was shut down as soon as questions were to be faced in Parliament.
Shifty.
So the Climate and Health Council have washed their hands of this "episode"
I like that "but" in the middle there. As if the revealing of Hintze is something they would consider an act of making something transparent and they could admire it, they just didn't have a hand in this particular "episode".
Shame the mystery "climate and health" organisation that might have some ties with their own organisation (in the same business, small world, and all that) hasn't been transparent and coughed their involvement in this act of transparenting someone ;)
Is 'climate and health' a post-modern version of health and efficiency?
For younger readers
Fiona Godlee said:
Huh???
What's the sense in that?
Is she suggesting that you cannot speculate until you know the facts? In which case, I'd suggest that it would not be speculation any more, would it?
The leaker can't be Fiona Armstrong. She was until recently a fellow at a think-tank (CPD) that offers its donors a box to tick if they don't want their names to be publicized.
J Bowers: I had a few seconds to read your post, so googled State Policy Network and without clicking further read:
Are you arguing that the Tea Party crazies are the legitimate heirs of Ronald Reagan? Without having taken much notice I gather Liam Fox and Adam Werrity were a bit loose with the paperwork, which led to Fox's resignation. No doubt others distanced themselves from both men. But what's the big deal here?
Thanks for the correction Geoff.
Wow! It's like there has been some unwritten rule broken about speculating on stuff in a public forum. Luckily this rule hasn't been written down, so I can't read it ;)
So we know they didn't write the original letter to Hintze, that is clear, but is there no chance they had seen it or had it pass through their hands? Who is the cc? Seems they may have connections with this charity and one of their transparentising happy workers decided to secretly hand it to the GUardian and maybe Godlee doesn't know.
I wonder if they have checked? Or if they even care to check. This "leak" from a mystery organisation is designed to damage a rival organisation which the CHC recently coordinated an attack on with the Guardian, so I'm guessing their motivation to break a sweat checking is low ;)
In evaluating Dr Godlee's statement, you should be aware that she has been investigated previously on different matters:
She is a world class, and likely a business class, carbon footprint maker. She and Prof. Roberts, a self-described climate criminal, are responsible for countless future deaths of polar bears drowning in the melting waters of one or the other ice caps.
So Montgomery was a co-signatory to the GWPF letter.
Montgomery and Armstrong were together in Durban: “Health leaders call for urgent action on climate” http://www.who.int/globalchange/mediacentre/events/2011/durban_news_update.pdf
Montgomery and Armstrong must have indulged in small talk – including climate scepticism. Montgomery must have mentioned his action plan regarding GWPF?
Armstrong and Hintze are both Australian
The narrative in the email request to Hintze plays on Australian climate sensitivities
October 2011: The Climate and Health Alliance is delighted to announce that Professor David De Kretser, former Governor of Victoria, has accepted the invitation of the Climate and Health Alliance to be the Patron of the Climate and Health Alliance. http://caha.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/October-2011-final-edition.pdf
Prof De Kretser is a high ranking politician and Australian climate activist http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/07/02/257869/when-scientists-take-to-the-streets-it%e2%80%99s-time-to-listen-up/?mobile=nc
Did De Kretser he know Hintze?
'The signatories of the letter were: Dr Fiona Godlee, Dr. Richard Horton, Professor Ian Roberts, Professor Hugh Montgomery, Professor Anthony Costello, Rachel Stancliffe, Dr. Robin Stott, Maya Tickell-Painter.' Actually, I am grateful that they are spending their time writing letters about a subject that they are unqualified to comment on. Personally, I would rather they do this than attempting to practice their chosen profession, at least they are not endangering any patients.
J Sherlock Bowers probably has clues as to the whereabouts of Lord Lucan and Shergar as well. Gotta love a good conspiracy theory.
Seems like the organisation has been pretty much identified. But it reads as if a third party actually sent:-
'Dear Michael - Please see the attached letter, sent on behalf of the XXX. I shall also send a hard copy in the mail as a formal approach from this organisation.'
And Hintze replies mentioning the politician Nigel Lawson, rather that the GWPF by name.
Could it possibly be a politico type providing the value added weight of his (Lady Chatterley's) to the outfit's funding initiative?
[Snip - let's talk about the subject of the post rather than other commenters]
My apologies, your Grace! It was, I admit, an ill-tempered rant triggered by memories of having scorn heaped upon my sceptical views when I expressed these in the Guardian's CiF some years ago when I was newly arrived in the UK and unaware of the reputations of various UK newspapers.
I stand by my comments that any organisation that uses Mssrs Karoly and Lewendowsky as experts in the field of CAGW is asking to be laughed at; the latter gentleman, an academic psychologist, seriously and egregiously impugns the psychological health of anyone sceptical of CAGW.
Ben Pile
I must admit that niggled me that I couldn't find that out with a quick Google - the expected Independent/Guardian/Observer piece or interview telling us about the family legacy and her relationship to the great man is absent. I guess it is not an important point to be "transparent" on - I mean who am I to dictate what should or should not be transparent? But I after a bit of a dig I think she is Crispin Tickells great niece.
For the record so we can all reference the family heritage. You will find that her mother is called Sophia Tickell in this charity run donation page.
http://www.justgiving.com/Maya-Painter
And in this article you will find a Sophia Tickell who is "an alumnus of Al Gore’s Climate Project and a trustee of Green Alliance." and "Sir Crispin's niece".
http://www.johnelkington.com/weblog/2006_10_01_arc.html
Richard Drake - I know nothing about the State Policy Network and have not even googled them, but I suspect there was a big deal here.
Like you I did not closely follow the Werritty-Fox affair, but do recall reading a commenter on a Scotsman story at the time Fox resigned, who linked to Craig Murray's blog: http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2011/11/matthew-gould-and-the-plot-to-attack-iran/
This led me to think that there was a lot more to know about Werritty than anyone in the MSM press was prepared to ask or print. Yet again it was the blogs which got closest to the truth.
iirc Murray contacted many in the press with this story but it was at least two weeks before something appeared in the Independent on Sunday - http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/liam-fox-adam-werritty-and-the-curious-case-of-our-man-in-tel-aviv-6268640.html . In googling for the Independent story I now see that the Telegraph was asking a few questions about Werrity in mid October - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/8829922/Adam-Werritty-plotted-with-Israel-to-topple-Irans-President-Ahmadinejad.html . But after Fox resigned, Werritty was effectively permitted to walk away into the limelight without any serious investigation, and afaik Gould remains the British ambassador in Israel despite having gone native.
I have no idea if this relates in any way to the climate issue, I just remember thinking that there was a lot more to this than the government and media made out.
if J Sherlock Bowers reappears, I remember once taking a class with a professor whose chair was funded by income from a bequest from Sir Basil Zaharoff - the notorious arms'-dealer of the 1920s and 30s. I quickly concluded that those considerations had no bearing on this professor's knowledge of 16thc French literature.
Similarly, i went to the British Museum, to a gallery funded by a notorious art connoisseur and possible/probable crook called Joseph Duveen. I still enjoyed looking at the Parthenon sculptures.
Back in the 1980s, after the Observer newspaper was taken over by Lonrho, I noticed that the business section was overrun by articles concerning the ownership of Harrods by Mohammed Al-Fayed. I was not sickened to the core, unlike a feeble-minded global-warming campaigner. I quickly assessed the prejudices on display and made due allowance for them.
These days, if I bother to read Tamino's site, I quickly gather that there is an elaborate rigmarole where he professes to portray his modus operandi and then, hey presto, the question is answered...exccept that it is not the question that was originally asked. Or something has changed subtly along the way. It is like engaging in a game of "Three-card monte". People who ask fawning questions of the maestro are buttered up by the charlatan in charge. People who question why the original question was not answered are attacked by people such as J Bowers and Dhogaza.
Which side is honest here?
Who cares who provides the funding as long as you have the intelligence to discern the prejudices on display? Hengist is clearly unable to do that kind of thinking: it is clearly beyond his powers. It might be beyond J Bowers too, except that he has hitched his waggon to the idea that the end of the wo0rld is nigh and does not dare to even consider that he was fooled.
Ah bad timing that JustGiving page seems to have just expired it is cached here:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:MXUjH47dQwYJ:www.justgiving.com/Maya-Painter+&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk
I may be even dimmer than usual, but I'm having some difficulty understanding what this is about - long way to the colonies, don't you know.
Is it possible that a notorious yet to be identified warmist group has sought funds from the fellow who is helping fund GWPF? And in another leek, their letter got loose in public?
Help me.
I'm also still mystified as to what +1 means in the context it's been recently employed at this site.
john
jferguson
The story appears to be:
A group wishes to know who funds GWPF.
A begging/phishing letter is sent to possible donors.
One replies after a second reminder letter that he already gives to Nigel Lawson.
Da Da Daaaaaaa (organ music).
Possible funder of GWPF (Nigel Lawson link) in shadows wearing top hat and cape.
Guardian orgasm.
+1 is shorthand in comments terms, for I agree with your comment and recommend your post.
jferguson
Top hedge fund manager and Tory donor called Hintze is involved in some supremely boring scandal about sitting at the same table and drinking wine with Tory politicians - this is the big news that proper jounalists are interested in.
The great Leo Hickman - tries to hitch a climate wagon to this story hoping for glory, and says they've seen an old email exchange from September last year in which Hintze declines to donate to an alarmist NGO and admits to "...supporting Nigel Lawson's initiative."
Now "...supporting Nigel Lawson's initiative." could mean Hintze claps politely when Lawson is mentioned at dinner parties, or it could mean Hintze is the denier nexus of the universe who plough billions into the GWPF. Take your pick.
The email exchange has been redacted to "protect the identity of the source".
What +1 means I think was someone agreeing with me when I said words to the effect that if it turns out that an NGO thinks it is OK to deliberately hand out private emails when they get rebuffed then that is a pretty shitty thing to do.
Thanks, guys.
Mar 28, 2012 at 10:47 PM | jferguson
+1 is a thumbs up. Google possibly started this fairly recently and it does seem to have struck a chord with a growing number of blog denizens.
Incidently, +1 is my response to the Radio 4 trilogy of afternoon plays 'Pandemic' that was recommended by Doug UK on this site. Thanks Doug!
Its first episode expires on BBCi early next week. All three are worth the 45 minutes of John Dryden's work but episode 3 is dynamite!
@The Leopard In The Basement
Good Googling! The Just-Giving page has expired now, but you can see it on Google's cache.
I share your views on the dubious virtue of 'transparency'. A preoccupation with it ultimately ends up in Hickman-style one-rule-for-me-another-for-thee double standards. But it does answer a question: how come a 24-year-old medical student's name can land beside the names of so many professors. Nothing produces mediocrity like that kind of nepotism - it runs in the family.
Lapogus and diogenes: brilliant, complementary contributions. Lap, the Israel and Iran connections are not only off topic (you might say it never put me off in the past) but I know almost nothing about Werrity's putative plottings in them. I've made a note for a rainy day. The only person I know who's met President Ahmadinejad criticised him to his face and lived to tell the tale. His Farsi is good and he has strong views. I am very interested in the country, top to bottom. And diogenes sums up why I would still say to J Bowers regarding Hintze and the GWPF: what's the big deal?
Plus we have the Tickell family tree and increasingly positive rumblings about Pandemic. What's not to like about Bishop Hill at such a time.
Of course the following observations could be coincidental...
*********
From the letter: "To date members have worked with "pro bono" and "in kind""
From CAHA's October 2011 newsletter, "But we need your help! CAHA undertakes its work largely on the basis of pro bono and inkind support."
**********************
From the letter "Health effects of fossil fuels report = $40K"
From CAHA's October 2011 newsletter, "The Climate and Health Alliance is currently preparing a paper on the health benefits of climate action, which will draw together the compelling evidence that actions to reduce emissions can also produce substantial health benefits"
***********************
From the letter, "Website = $30K"
Caha's old website http://climateandhealthalliance.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html tells us to look at the new one beginning 2011.
*************************
This is either an incompetent error or a willfully mischievous lie: Australia is not in the top ten of heaviest emitters of carbon dioxide, even on a per capita basis.
Ben Pile
Yeah, it must happen a lot when the genetic strain is pushed to the limit and the family insisting their idiot son being a 4th generation doctor just becomes untenable. When I think of the Bach's in music or the Bernoulli's in mathematics producing familial bursts of genius that leave a legacy to today I see the exception rather than the rule.
Although maybe it is easier to produce a whole phylum of great environmentalists today because it is so easy to do? The opportunities to make us all believe that the Tickells are all great environmentalists today is just there and almost inevitable. Why would you do something else that risked failure when you can easily emit the required cant and be a "great" environmentalist? ;)
Incidently the inspiration, for the plot of 'Pandemic', may have been provided by the Duke of Edinburgh,Prince Charles' old man who famously stated in 1988:
“In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, in order to contribute something to solve overpopulation.”
Strangely enough and also in 1988.
NASA scientist James Hansen testified before the House of Representatives that there was a strong "cause and effect relationship" between observed temperatures and human emissions into the atmosphere.... The observation that he'd nobbled the Air-Con in the chamber at the time of his performance by the simple expedient of leaving the windows open in his lead-up is a glowing testimony to his grasp of Physics and Advanced Stagecraft!
Just because, coincidently, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) came into being in the same year should not be used as evidence of Green-Weirding by the ranks of BBC sceptics.
Correlation is not causation. (rule 1 in the 'Sceptical Handbook' and also in the 'Warmistadorial Wafflings' but with the word 'not' removed and a parenthetical 'unless it supports the cause' added )
Anyway, it's a +1 from me to the 21st Century holder of the Dryden cognomen and a +1 to the BBC for restoring some of my faith in that once, and possibly once again, august and respected body.
@The Leopard In The Basement: "Although maybe it is easier to produce a whole phylum of great environmentalists today because it is so easy to do?"
Yes, and I think the condition is that you simply have to be well-connected; environmentalism is a phenomenon that afflicts the political establishment.
talking of things running in the family
It was Arrhenius' nephew or great-nephew who IIRC worked at Mauna Loa, and inspired Al Gore. Sorry too late in the day to check refs.
On Maya Tickell and nepotism being hereditary:
..or could it be that being lumbered with a daft name gives you a grudge against society? A desire to give ‘em one for Gaia?
(That said, there’s something called the Aztec Slap on Youtube...)
JBowers: "The GWPF not being funded by Big Oil is 100% straw man, as it was Lawson's own answer to the question "Who is funding the GWPF?" However, the funder turns out to be the guy who backed Adam Werrity, who was in turn American Legislative Exchange Council's stooge unlawfully embedded in Parliament, which in turn is part of State Policy Network. Tea Party crazy. No wonder Atlantic Bridge was shut down as soon as questions were to be faced in Parliament.
Shifty."
As far as the evidence goes Big Oil is providing massive funding to environmental groups and barely a thimble full of dish to sceptics. I assume that this obsession with Big Oil among alarmists is because having all but silenced dissenting voices in the MSM they aren't achieving their goal of reducing the Western Industrial civilisation to rubble. Well here's a clue, you have grossly underestimated the intelligence of the average Joe/Jo, they just don't buy quasi-religious warnings of death and destruction if they don't conform to a worldview dictated by environmentalists. Nothing to do with Big Oil, just the common sense of ordinary people. Just wait until it leaks out that the total annual output of CO2 emissions from the UK is just 3.5 weeks, and falling, of China's emissions.
Welcome by the way, there are a lot of people drifting onto these blogs now that CiF on climate change has all but been closed down by the Guardian. I hope you find, and adopt, the polite, but robust style of the commentators here which are a refreshing change from the sneering and insulting language used by the alarmists in CiF.
@j bowers
'However, the funder turns out to be the guy who backed Adam Werrity, who was in turn American Legislative Exchange Council's stooge unlawfully embedded in Parliament, which in turn is part of State Policy Network. Tea Party Crazy'
Did you forget the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the Prieure de Sion, the Zinoviev Letter and, of course, David Icke and the Giant Lizards? Surely they must all be involved in the tangled web of Well-Funded Shadowy Big Oil Denialist Conspiracy somewhere?
Do give us the whole thing! You know you want to.
Ben Pile
Right. Whereas in the Bach's and Bernoulli's circumstances their musical or mathematical enabling environments helped enable family members to exploit their inherent musical or mathematical genes, if they had them, it couldn't force you to be become a musical or mathematical genius. However, with a political enabling environment the genetic element is so low that you can force any original genetic material to become an "environmentalist" it is just the connections and a set of rhetoric you need and presto you're sorted! ;)
I should have said above become an "environmental genius" .
Since we are all already environmentalists at birth ;)
The question to be answered now is why did Cameron write to Gillard on the 22nd July last year supporting her introduction of a carbon tax?
Is UK energy policy set by the coalition and an objective civil service or Cameron's eco-extremist wife and her commercial interests in shafting the poor of Britain with high power costs?
I just had a thought - the well worn cliche of the idiot member of an aristocratic family with no prospect "going into the church" has changed in our secular age to - "going into environmentalism"
@j bowers
And let me add my welcome to geronimos. Good to see that you, too, have escaped from the intellectual strangulation of CiF.
But please be warned. You may read things here that you disagree with. And there are no friendly lickspittle partyline moderators just a moment away for you to have such material removed. Here you have to argue your point not just click on 'report', sure in the knowledge that anything you dislike will vanish into the nebulous ether of banned 'free comments' at the gurnaid.
Enjoy the Freedom of Commentary here.
Good advice Latimer: J Bowers is in my view one of the activists for whom the prospect of 'the cause' apparently allows normal objective analysis to be buried for the duration.
However, underneath the bluster is a good mind and he/she can be turned to the path of truthfulness now we know 'the cause' is the destruction of capitalism and its replacement by a brutal aristocratic bureaucracy with windmills on their dachas.
I guess the Bish may be too diplomatic to say this but are the CaHA giving us the silent treatment? I would have thought the day cycle would have given them a chance to repond. I'd expect a straight denial would be no skin off their nose if it isn't their email, after all, the Climate and Health Council quickly interjected to make sure they were not attached to this "episode".
If it was their email and they were innocent of distributing it then they may be expected to confirm that too with no problem I would have thought. It may be too early to say "silence is consent" but if it is left hanging that some "climate and health" charity somewhere is Ok with the attempted moral leverage implied by this "episode" then I think we can all go away knowing that all this talk of owning the moral high ground via "transparency" is a load of hypocritical cant and laugh in the face of any climate and health fool who puffs up their chest and claims it ;)
'its replacement by a brutal aristocratic bureaucracy with windmills on their dachas'
I'd like to point out that my patron and sponsor, Prince Charles has recently told me (and Bill and Ben were there too so it must be true) that he won't allow any windmills on his land. Despite that nasty flashy Andy the Budget Helicopter little brother of his liking all that whirly bladey stuff.
Flobadob
geronimo:
Is that right? Does anyone know why it has happened?
Little Weed from Highgrove: Flobadob to you sir/madam.
Also, next time jug ears and you have a conflobadob, tell him from me that I suspect he may be being used by Porritt as a mouthpiece for the eugenicists who want, through fuel starvation in the new little ice Age, to kill of half the UK's population.
Maya Tickell-Painter seems to be the daughter of James Painter (Reuters Institute for Journalism, Oxford). James Painter wrote 'Poles Apart' - a study of scepticism in climate reporting, ably deconstructed by Maurizio Morabito here: http://omniclimate.wordpress.com/2012/02/02/the-unknown-skeptic-an-essay-on-poles-apart-1of7-introduction/.
From Painter's earlier report 'Summoned by Science: Reporting Climate Change at Copenhagen and Beyond' in the acknowledgements:
@richard drake
'CiF on climate change has all but been closed down by the Guardian.
Is that right? Does anyone know why it has happened?'
My guess is that the CiF Thought Police - ever so sensitive to the slightest infringement of their ever so long but unpublished list of things that must not be said - have managed to ban everybody bar j bowers and gpwayne from commenting there.
And since they both get their kicks from shouting and screeching at 'deniers' even they get bored with no targets allowed into CiF airspace.
Personally I view being banned from CiF some while back as Badge of Pride. I must have been doing something to upset them. But that was way back when when their opinions still had some influence...no more, no more...