Profiles in Malicious Deception - Myron Ebell's DeSmog Files

(Thank you DeSmogBlog for collecting and sharing this important information.)

Myron Ebell

http://www.desmogblog.com/myron-ebell

Donald Trump's EPA Transition Team

In September of 2016, Myron Ebell was selected by Donald Trump to lead his U.S. EPA transition team, two sources told Scientific American. [64], [65]

“Ebell's views appear to square with Trump’s when it comes to EPA’s agenda. Trump has called global warming 'bullshit' and he has said he would 'cancel' the Paris global warming accord and roll back President Obama’s executive actions on climate change.” [65]

In March, 2016, Trump promised to make major budget cuts to the EPA and to “get rid of [EPA] in almost every form. We are going to have little tidbits left but we are going to take a tremendous amount out.” [73]

DeSmog noted that earlier in August, climate change denier Kathleen Hartnett-White, director of the energy and environment project at the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) joined Trump's “Economic Advisory team.” A post-election chart provided to Politico confirmed that Ebell would be managing Trump's EPA transition team. [64] , [72]

The Huffington Post reported on “11 Reasons Why Trump’s Climate-Denying EPA Guy Could Spell Disaster For The Environment,” noting that a petition had been posted on the White House website calling for Ebell to be ousted from this role (the petition has since been removed). [92]

Will, take a peek at Morano's Climate Hustle

Speaking of ClimateDepot's Marc Morano, that alpha attack-dog of the Republican/libertarian machine.  A character who I believe is an exemplar of the sorts of individuals who have became the force driving the past decades meltdown in constructive-dialogue and statesmanship.  With bigger than life egos and never learning from their mistakes.  Instead always doubling down with ever more self-certainly, extreme slander, hostility and misrepresentations - and never ever an ounce of self-skepticism; or curiosity about the available Earth observation information.

Will, I just found out that Marc's created a film Climate Hustle (yeah, talk about  bringing politics into it) and he's scheduled a world premier at the Cinéma du Panthéon in Paris during the upcoming climate conference.  Guess it's his way of making the case for willfully ignoring down to Earth realities.  

Graham Readfearn has written an article about Morano's "Climate Hustle" which I'm reposting for your edification (without ads even  ; ).  But first, here are some other information rich articles regarding this political thug and denier of our collective dependence on a healthy planet:

Climate Change Misinformer Of The Year: Marc Morano: Never forget we have Murdoch madness and Andrew Bolt

Peter Imrich | old dog thoughts.com | Posted on January 19, 2015

ClimateDepot.com founder Marc Morano has been called “the Matt Drudge of climate denial,” the “king of the skeptics,” and “a central cell of the climate-denial machine,” and he revels in these descriptions. Although he has no scientific expertise, he is adamant that manmade global warming is a “con job” based on “subprime science.”  

Morano gained prominence working for two of the most vocal climate deniers in the U.S.: Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), who notoriously called climate change “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,” and Rush Limbaugh, who we named Climate Change Misinformer of the Year in 2011 for his steadfast denial of climate science and wild conspiracy theories about the climate change “hoax.” 

These days Morano is paid by an industry-funded group to run the climate denial website ClimateDepot.com. At Climate Depot, Morano serves as the de facto research department for the right-wing media’s attacks on climate science, and mobilizes his readers to target individual scientists and reporters for telling the public about climate change threats. … (link to read all of it)

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The Planet Wreckers  | 10 Jun 2012

Climate-change deniers are on the ropes - but so is our planet.

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This Man Wants to Convince You Global Warming Is a Hoax

Marc Morano broke the Swift Boat story and effectively stalled John Kerry's presidential run. Now he is working against an even bigger enemy: belief in climate change.

Somehow, he seems to be winning. 

By John. Richardson  |  MAR 30, 2010 

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a7078/marc-morano-0410/

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Swift Boat Veterans for Truth

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Swift_Boat_Veterans_for_Truth

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Marc Morano's Climate Hustle Film Set For Paris Premiere With Same Old Denial Myths

Marc Morano is never short of a superlative or two, but when it has come to promoting his long-gestating documentary Climate Hustle, the climate science denialist extraodinaire has been outdoing himself. "We are putting together what I think is the most comprehensive, unique, entertaining and humorous climate documentary that has ever been done or attempted," Morano…

Come on Willie Soon, how about that debate?

I was reflecting on the final paragraph in my recently completed tenth installment of the great CC/Steele Debate, it came from an article by Lindsey Abrams regarding Heartland Institute's defense of Willie Soon's financial exposure, it reads:

"But the real scandal is that Soon, who is not a climate scientist and who has aligned himself with the decidedly unscientific Heartland Institute, is continuing to stand by the integrity of his work, which deviates sharply from the vast majority of climate science. 

If (Dr. Soon) is, as he claimed, “willing to debate the substance of my research and competing views of climate change with anyone, anytime, anywhere,” he might want to start with the climate scientists listed in this exhaustive round-up of all the ways in which the substance of his research has been debated and discredited on its scientific merit alone. …"

I visited that last link and found an overwhelming collection of information detailing the fraudulent nature of "Dr" Willie Soon's game, which seems intimately interwoven with Heartland Institute's malicious focus on misleading and confusing leaders and the public.

With thanks to Connor Gibson and DeSmogBlog I'm happy to mirror this valuable source of information and its many links to yet more detailed and authoritative information regarding Soon's fraud against We The People and our right to learn about climate science and Earth observations in an honest manner.

Willie Soon's Climate Science Denial 

Wasn't Ever Credible: Climate Scientists

By Connor Gibson • Saturday, February 28, 2015

http://www.desmogblog.com/2015/02/28/willie-soon-s-climate-denial-wasn-t-ever-credible-climate-scientists

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“The science that Willie Soon does is almost pointless.” - NASA climate scientist Gavin Schmidt, to the New York Times

Recent revelations regarding Smithsonian scientist Willie Soon's financing and coordination with fossil fuel companies for studies undermining the science of climate change has received quite a bit of attention. Our friends at the Climate Investigations Center have links to source documents, letters to the IRS and Congress, letters to journals that Soon appears to have mislead, and some of the press covering all of this.

The drama has largely outshone the main point among most scientists: Willie Soon's work is vastly discredited. For those who aren't familiar with Willie Soon's fossil fuel company contracting over the last fifteen years, there is probably a legitimate question of whether or not this guy deserves to be in his current pinch.

Frankly, he had it coming.

Senator Inhofe's Medieval Warm Period deception - by John Mashey

Here's a slight digression.  While Jim and I are engaged in our little "climate science horror story" altercation, the big boys running our country are playing the same intellectually dishonest juvenile games as Mr. Steele does.  For instance, Oklahoma's Senator Inhofe, now Chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works committee, a force not to be dismissed.  This man has real power and yields it with brutal efficiency.

Tragically for our children this Senator Inhofe is an absolutist with open contempt for serious science (see here and here) and anyone who disagrees with him on anything.  

I mean this is the Senator who brought in a writer of pulp thrillers to testify on climate science!  Worse, Inhofe's fiction author was in the middle of a book-selling campaign for his most recent yarn.  But than, that was no coincidence, was it?  Farcical though it seems this paperback writer was put in front of a US Senate committee that was charged with learning about what professional climatologists were discovering - a fiction story peddler!  And Republican's are good with that.

Then Inhofe used this storyteller's words to justify ignoring what actual professional scientists, who have dedicated their lives to understanding these processes, were trying to convey.  What up with that? 

And now this powerful Senator has repackaged another fable, the infamous Medieval Warming Period's "Lamb Graph" - of no purpose but to waste yet more precious time - rather than getting down to business.

Of Recursive Fury, SkepticForum and science denialist's strategy of harassment

Interesting news today, particularly in light of my own recent experience at SkepticForum.com with one Jim Steele and the moderator of said forum. The same moderator who believes injecting graphics of an exploding head (link with care, it's quite disgusting) into what's supposed to be a serious discuss about climate science is fair play.

But try going toe to toe with a malicious climate science denialist, even though the fella in question, one Jim Steele, grossly misrepresents and downright lies about the science - plus he injects copious amounts of slander (and more lies) towards serious published scientists he doesn't like, or anyone else that gets in his way.  But,  you'd better not call him on it over at the "skeptic's forum".

The Global Warming Policy Foundation collection

http://www.sourcewatch.org/images/2/23/GWPF_graph_2011-12.png

{ Check out Dan Olner's improved banner at the bottom of this post. }

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Recently the grand sounding Global Warming Policy Foundation, {in actuality a tiny club of non-climatologist politicians}, has been making the news for their outrageously misleading claims regarding global warming observations and climatological understanding.

It's worth noting that the GWPF's title banner has a surface temperature graph that goes from 2001-2012, typifying the tunnel vision they are committed to.

Think about it, our man-made global warming geophysical experiment is the result of a couple centuries worth of increasing human impact on our atmosphere, and our children's decades are stretching out before us.  Pretending that global warming can be discussed by focusing exclusively on the last decade's surface temp is beyond deluded and crosses over into plain old calculated fraud.

Yet, for the Global Warming Policy Foundation's brain-trust Lord Lawson the conservative politician and journalist and his sidekick the PhD of social anthropology Benny Peiser there seems to be no past history to consider nor any future worth worrying about.  

Most frightening is that they've become such a hit in such a short time thanks to that scared faith based sector of our population that simply does not want to know, folks who are happy to be fed lies, rather than challenging themselves with learning about what we are doing to the planet we depend on.

OK, that's enough of me. 
The rest of this post is a collection of articles and information from various sources highlighting many deceptions the devious GWPF has been caught at.  But, first I'll let the GWPF introduce themselves in their own words.  Then we shall see examples of how poorly they live up to those professed standards.  

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THE GWPF: HISTORY AND MISSION

The Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine Petition on climate change

I've been carrying on a conversation over at a weird little YouTube video named "Denier land: How deniers view global warming."  The thing is a textbook example of what's called an "Argument from Incredulity."  Meaning that the person is flailing at information that he obviously doesn't understand, like a petulant school boy angry at a teacher who's just flunked him.

Rather than trying to learn something from that information he hides behind ridicule while ignoring all he doesn't understand.  I know many people behave like that, but it's definitely no way to learn anything.

In any event, I've been commenting over there and some folks keep challenging me with different, not new, twists on the climate science skeptics handbook of excuses for ignoring what a world wide community of tens of thousands of professionals and experts agree on.

For example, take the following claim:

""More than 2,000 scientists from 154 countries typically participate in the IPCC process" 

That is not only dishonest but unimpressive too. Over 30,000 scientists in the USA alone signed a petition disagreeing. Prominent scientists around the world with far more credibility than the anonymous 2000 so-called scientists agree with those 30,000. 

You could dispute these figures, as many are not in relevant fields and many do not have higher degree or research backgrounds. However if you did so you admit to your dishonesty, as most of the 2000+ you claim are not researchers, most are not experts in their fields and many do not have PhDs, unlike over 9000 of those in those 30,000."

That, along with other pitches for the "OISM Petition," has inspired me to compose this compilation of information regarding the Oregon Petition, finishing with a REPOST of a DeSmogBlog story examining Arthur Robinson and his one-man operation, the so-called "Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine"

Investigating Dr. Michael Mann... a supplement

To supplement my previous post, here's a list of investigations into Dr. Mann and allegations stemming from the break in and hacking of the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit, courtesy of SkepticalScience.com.  I finish with a DeSmogBlog profile of the American Tradition Institute:

What do the 'Climategate' hacked CRU emails tell us?

Donors Trust, Barre Seid, Heartland Institution, NIPCC, follow the money

In doing research for my NIPCC related posts today I came across this aside.  Though after reading it again and considering money is at the heart of Heartland Institution motivations, it may not be such an aside after all.  In particular that first PDF "Fake2" is quite the interesting document.

You decide:

Fakery 2: More Funny Finances, Free Of Tax (via Desmogblog)

Follow the money.  October 23, PBS Frontline's Climate of Doubt gave viewers an hour's coverage of the tactics of climate anti-science, its advocates and a quick look into the funding behind it. Read on to follow the money deeper into the funny finances, all free of tax. Last February, Fake Science…

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Climate Science Denial Books Linked To Conservative Think Tanks - G. Readfearn

This seemed like a most interesting article and one that is definitely worth adding to my collection of information that exposes the nature of the Climate Change Science Skeptics political underpinning.  This is important because understand what society has done to it's global heat distribution engine, requires a dedication to the principles of honest curiosity and an ethical pursuit of learning - rather than the denialist's total dedication to winning a preconceived goal.  

In their paper Dr. Riley Dunlap, of Oklahoma State University, and Associate Professor Peter Jacques, of the University of Central Florida have detailed facts and confirmed what many of have suspected.  Namely that "society caused global warming" denial is the strategic effort of a small group of well funded individuals who are divorced from the usual checks and balances of the real scientific process.

Graham Readfearn has written a good summation of the study at DeSmogBlog.com
and I thank DesmogBlog for making their article available for reposting.

Murdering a scientific paper on sea-level rise – the Graham Lloyd way

Here is another example of the base dishonesty of the denialist crowd.  Thanks to the author Graham Readfearn and desmogblog.com for their generous reposting policy which allows informative articles like this to be shared among a wider audience.

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How The Australian Newspaper Warps The World of Climate Science (via Desmogblog)

THERE is a publication in Australia where for every one story you read which agrees society should take firm steps to combat climate change, there are four stories suggesting we shouldn’t. When climate change is viewed through the pages of this publication, most of the world’s “experts” think…

John O'Sullivan, master manipulator - A Closer Look

Brendan Demelle and Richard Littlemore  at DesmogBlog.com have revealed more information regarding the serial liar John O'Sullivan.  The following is a repost of their interesting July 26, 2012 article.

Guess I'm trying to figure out how people choose to believe such obvious frauds rather than dedicated scientists.

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Desmog Video Affidavits in Michael Mann Libel Suit Reveal Astonishing Facts About Tim Ball Associate John O'Sullivan (via Desmogblog)

Affidavits filed in the British Columbia Supreme Court libel litigation brought by climate scientist Michael Mann against climate science denier Timothy Ball reveal that Ball's collaborator and self-styled "legal advisor" has misrepresented his credentials and endured some significant legal embarrassments…

Heartland Institute's Hired Guns & The NIPCC... Mr. Littlemore

Watts has been having a rager over at his blog... adding his own spin fast as he can.  Here's a recent update:  UPDATE 55: 1:50PM 2/25 The Weekly Standard has a great story up.
(Anthony) Loved this part:

Finally, “coordinated”? Few public policy efforts have ever had the massive institutional and financial coordination that the climate change cause enjoys. That tiny Heartland, with but a single annual conference and a few phone-book-sized reports summarizing the skeptical case, can derange the climate campaign so thoroughly is an indicator of the weakness and thorough politicization of climate alarmism.

Yes it is disgusting that a tiny Heartland can get the type of financial backing to pay professional contrarians in a media effort far removed from doing actual science.  But, folks like Anthony are so focused on their political goals they feel justified doing anything and saying anything so long as they can out shout the voices of science and rationality.

Richard Littlemore at DeSmogBlog.com has a great article highlighting one aspect of that rational.  Hire scientists - not to learn but to create rhetorical parlor debate tricks intent on stonewalling any recognition of what climate science is teaching us. 

Check out The Heartland Institute’s “Brain Trust” - who are incidentally, pretty much the same dozen folks who produce the Nongovernmental Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports.

I'm posting this {words are all Littlemore, highlight are all mine} because in conversations at various internet discussion forums, one of the main refrains that gets tossed in my face is how it all comes down to which scientist you choose to believe.  Coupled onto that is the claim that government and university scientists manipulate their data to achieve some mandated consensus.  

Sadly those charges come from people who have either remained blessedly ignorant of the parade of scientific literature and the history of their learning process - or folks who are hired guns and for whom honesty is a joke when it gets in the way of 
their corporate wild west style free-market agenda.

As support for this image of The Heartland Institute as ruthlessly dedicated to a message rather than learning about climatology I copy the following from Richard Littlemore’s February 24, 2012 post at Desmogblog.com because it contains names and sums and reveals Heartland Institute for the agenda driven lobby organization that it is.  Dedicated to undermining serious rational science.  

It scares the hell outta me that such people remain so powerful and are allowed to cause such counter productive crazy-making...  since there's not much I can do, here's my contribution to the effort... to witness and document this scandal as it plays out.
 

What passes for a Brain Trust at Heartland?

It's Time That Climate-Change Deniers Were Exposed ~ David Suzuki

Getting caught up on the news this morning I read David Suzuki's article 
"It's Time That Climate-Change Deniers Were Exposed."  
It's another original that deserves to be added to this collection.  
His refreshing appraisal of Heartland Institute’s handling of this affair was an excellent counterbalance to the onslaught of the professional HI PR juggernaut and incidentals like Bud Ward’s nose dive over at Yale Forum.

Once again I tried grabbing key paragraphs, and once again, it don't work. 
With a twinge of trepidation {in advance, thank you David Suzuki} here is another essential-reading 
article for students of:

~ Anthropogenic Global Warming Denial ~
 
Chapter - Heartland Institute Mindset...  
Sub-heading - Puzzling over Heartland Institute's disconnect from our planet's realities? . . . 
{dare I say their Willful Ignorance? . . .}

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It's time that climate-change deniers were exposed

By  David Suzuki,  ~ February 21, 2012 ~ David Suzuki Foundation

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When hackers broke into an Internet server at East Anglia University in the U.K. and selectively released massive amounts of correspondence from the world’s leading climate scientists, folks at the Chicago-based Heartland Institute were quick to exploit it.

Heartland president Joseph Bast wrote: “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.”

He may have been correct, although “reconfirm” would have been a better word than “reconsider” as seven independent investigations cleared the scientists of any wrongdoing and confirmed the credibility of their research.

Now the tables have been turned on the libertarian “charitable” organization, which devotes its resources to questioning the reality of climate change and the dangers of secondhand tobacco smoke, among other issues.

Heartland is just one of many organizations dedicated to spreading doubt and confusion about legitimate science. These groups share a lack of transparency and an agenda to promote corporate interests at the expense of human health, the environment, and even the economy (if we believe the economy should function primarily in the interests of citizens rather than corporations).

Recently, someone—since identified as climate scientist Peter Gleick—sent documents from the Heartland Institute’s board of directors’ January 17 meeting to a number of people and organizations, including Desmog Blog, a website devoted to exposing the spin around climate change denial. The documents confirm much of what we already knew about Heartland, although they provide interesting details about its connections and motives.

Not surprisingly, the Heartland people don’t see this as “an opportunity for reporters, academics, politicians, and others” to learn more about the secretive group’s agenda. Instead, Heartland posted a statement on its website saying, “honest disagreement should never be used to justify the criminal acts and fraud that occurred in the past 24 hours.”

Unlike most environmental and social justice organizations, including the David Suzuki Foundation, the Heartland Institute doesn’t publicly reveal information about where it gets its money and what it does with it.

These documents indicate that Heartland has offered U.S. weatherman blogger and climate change denier Anthony Watts close to $90,000 for a new project. They also reveal that Heartland funds other prominent deniers, including “Craig Idso ($11,600 per month), Fred Singer ($5,000 per month, plus expenses), Robert Carter ($1,667 per month), and a number of other individuals..."

The papers also confirm that the institute’s primary mission is to discredit the established science of human-caused climate change. And even though it has received funding from wealthy individuals and corporations in the fossil fuel and tobacco industries, including the Koch brothers and RJR Tobacco, it gets most of its money from a single anonymous donor, who has ponied up as much as $4.6 million in a single year, 2008.

If these groups were truly engaged in questioning the science, using valid scientific methods and principles, it wouldn’t be a problem. Science is strengthened through scrutiny and challenges; that’s how it works, and that’s what the peer-review process is about. But these organizations are engaged in secretive and dishonest lobbying and public relations efforts aimed at stalling measures to protect the environment and health.

Gleick has admitted that he made a mistake in posing as someone else to obtain the documents. The unidentified East Anglia hackers were also wrong to have stolen the emails, and the Heartland Institute is wrong when it lies about the most serious threat to humanity.

Three wrongs don’t make a right, but there are some differences. In the East Anglia case, the investigations turned on those who were hacked and ultimately proved that the climate scientists, although human, are engaged in sound and verifiable science and that they have been subjected to years of harassment and bullying for their work. The Heartland documents show that the organization is using its taxpayer-supported status to spread lies and misinformation.

It’s about time these “merchants of doubt” were exposed. It’s time to get back to real science as practiced by scientists. We must get beyond the false debate about the reality of climate change and into the real debate about what to do about it.

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http://www.straight.com/article-612156/vancouver/david-suzuki-its-time-climatechange-deniers-were-exposed

Written with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation
Editorial and Communications Specialist Ian Hanington
Learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org.

Text is 100% David Suzuki, formatting is all mine.  ;-)

Watts Up With DenialGate ?

Anthony Watts has made a good living proclaiming that the scientific community's “consensus” cannot be trusted.  A consensus that's been arrived at after decades of study by literally tens of thousands of researchers.  Instead trotting out a gallery of so-called independent scientists to present an alternative view of reality.

It seems that Heartland likes his work too.  As revealed by the recent revelations of DenialGate, or as I like calling it HeartlandGate.

Of course, Anthony is crying foul and claiming it’s all a fraud... though Heartland sounded less certain when apologizing to donors for their names being exposed.  They do assert at least one particularly damning document was a fake.  Worth mentioning is that Justin Gillis and Leslie Kaufman reporting for the NYTimes weren’t impressed with the denial writing:

“Heartland did declare one two-page document to be a forgery, although its tone and content closely matched that of other documents that the group did not dispute. In an apparent confirmation that much of the material, more than 100 pages, was authentic, the group apologized to donors whose names became public as a result of the leak.”

As for Anthony ~ seems he was paid $44,000 in January with another $44,000 promised for setting up a website “devoted to accessing the new temperature data from NOAA’s website."  Which in Watts' world means finding the slightest flaw and hyper-inflating it to justify a total disregard for what the data is telling us.

Recall that Watts’ previous effort to undermine trust in the official temperature records, the Surfacestations Project turned out to be a dud that, just like the recent BEST Study, turned out to validate the official temperature records {and here}... unless of course one takes Watts’ egomaniacal stand that anyone disagreeing with him is in on the “climate conspiracy” one that involves tens of thousands of researchers across countless scientific disciplines, no less.

Among the contemptible revelations perhaps this one reported at ThinkProgress.org by Brad Johnson is the worst.  A strategic attack on science within schools {no wonder America is falling behind in science education} :

Dr. Wojick proposes to begin work on “modules” for grades 10-12 on climate change (“whether humans are changing the climate is a major scientific controversy“), climate models (“models are used to explore various hypotheses about how climate works. Their reliability is controversial”), and air pollution (“whether CO2 is a pollutant is controversial. It is the global food supply and natural emissions are 20 times higher than human emissions”).

Wojick would produce modules for Grades 7-9 on environmental impact (“environmental impact is often difficult to determine. For example there is a major controversy over whether or not humans are changing the weather“), for Grade 6 on water resources and weather systems, and so on.

Wojick will receive $5,000 per module, with twenty modules produced a year. Wojick, who manages the Climate Change Debate listserv, is not a climate scientist. His doctorate is in epistomology.

Another revealing and disturbing quote:

“Efforts at places such as Forbes are especially important now that they have begun to allow high-profile climate scientists (such as Gleick) to post warmist science essays that counter our own. This influential audience has usually been reliably anti-climate and it is important to keep opposing voices out.”

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For more information:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/denialgate-heartland.html

http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2010/01/13/205343/anti-science-blogger-anthony-watts-wattsupwiththat-conflict-of-interest-weather-stations/

http://thinkprogress.org/green/2012/02/14/425354/internal-documents-climate-denier-heartland-institute-plans-global-warming-curriculum-for-k-12-schools/ 

http://www.desmogblog.com/it-s-bird-it-s-hockey-stick-it-s-faked-document

http://climatecrocks.com/2012/02/16/denialgate-get-it-all-here/

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0212/73002.html

Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change

Perhaps the finest example of the crazy-making Anthony Watts champions is the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC).

Anthony tells us we are supposed to trust a handful of scientists ~ while disregarding the efforts of tens of thousands of hardworking researchers.  

Ironically the 2011 Interim NIPCC Report's list of intrepid independent scientists consists of a total of three lead authors Craig Idso, Fred Singer, and Robert Carter and eight contributing authors Susan Crockford, Joe D'Aleo, Indur Goklany, Sherwood Idso, Anthony Lupo, Willie Soon, Mitch Taylor, and Madhav Khandekar.

So while WUWT glibly demonizes thousands of mainstream scientists for their greedy grant money grubbing bias ~ we should remain blind to the fact that most of NIPCC scientists are on the Heartland payroll.  

Check it out: “The overall Heartland budget for the NIPCC reports from 2010 to 2013 is nearly $1.6 million ($388,000 in both 2011 and 2012), with $460,000 going to the lead authors and contributors ($140,000 in both 2011 and 2012).”

As those Dana over at SkepticalScience.com have pointed out: 

“Basically these scientists are paid with the specific goal of arguing against the scientific evidence in the IPCC report, whereas the only goal of the IPCC authors {who donate their time}is to produce an accurate, comprehensive review of the climate science literature. 

Indeed, this represents the biggest difference between the IPCC and NIPCC: the former is a comprehensive literature review, while the latter is a very select literature review.”

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RealClimate took a look at NIPCC’s alternate reality back in 2008, it’s worth a read:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/11/not-the-ipcc-nipcc-report/

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SkepticalScience reports on the breaking story as do many other good sources.  To mention just a few:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/denialgate-highlights-heartlands-selective-nipcc-science.html

http://www.skepticalscience.com/denialgate-heartland.html

http://www.desmogblog.com/heartland-insider-exposes-institute-s-budget-and-strategy

http://scienceprogressaction.org/intersection/2012/02/dissuading-teachers-from-teaching-science-the-leak-of-alleged-heartland-institute-documents/
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Chris Mooney: "Anthony Watts and Defensive Reasoning"

I came across this article today and believe it's worth sharing.
Tip of the hat to Chris Mooney and DeSmogBlog.com

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Anthony Watts and Defensive Reasoning: Three Episodes
Chris Mooney, November 16, 2011 ~  desmogblog.com

"Over the last year, I’ve had numerous blogospheric encounters with the conservative climate “skeptic” Anthony Watts, the author of WattsUpWithThat.

"In the process, I’ve been particularly struck by how Watts handles inconvenient evidence.

"Twice now, I’ve seen Watts make a mistake, and then seem to rationalize it, rather than simply correct it. 

"I’ve also seen Watts shift the goalposts, refusing to accept inconvenient evidence even after saying he would do so.

"What’s up with that?

"Look: We all make mistakes. And we all adopt beliefs that later turn out to be incorrect. There's nothing wrong with that per se; it's actually quite natural. What really matters is what we do after we’re proven wrong. So let’s see what Watts does:"

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"Research on Astroturfing. A while back, I introduced the blogosphere to a social science study on online anti-global warming astroturfing. Watts then leapt in, accusing the researchers of having “setup fake websites to gather fake data."
{...}
"Note the underlying point here. Watts launched a baseless attack on the astroturfing study. When his error was pointed out, he tried to blame the study authors, and came up with new criticisms, including protesting that they should have conducted the study in a way that he himself had previously claimed would have been deceptive and misleading, or even unethical."
~ ~ ~ 

"On to episode two:
The BEST Study. I just wrote about this one, and it is quite telling.

A while back, Anthony Watts wrote of the headline-grabbing Berkeley BEST study that “I’m prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong.”
But when the study came out and he didn’t like its findings, Watts instead engaged in  a phenomenon called goalpost shifting. Look at how he now talks about the BEST work: In a recent post, he referred to the “incomplete and rushed, non quality controlled, error riddled BEST science.”
Are we noting a common theme here?"

~ ~ ~
"On to episode three:
The Republican Brain: My next book will not be out for about 6 months. Nevertheless, much like the Astroturf study, Watts attacked it without reading it. He justified doing so by claiming that someone else had reviewed the book, so he could rely on that review instead: link"

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"Why is all of this significant?

If you can’t admit it when you’re wrong,

 you also can’t know when you’re right.

If you don’t hold your opinions and beliefs tentatively, subject them to scrutiny, and then try to parse out which of them truly hold weight, then you run the risk of rushing headlong into all manner of self-serving biases."
~ ~ ~ 

"And please note: This has nothing to do with whether or not you’re smart.
Smart people (like Watts) are in fact particularly vulnerable to this problem, because they’re extra good at rationalizing their views. Even as they’re super awesome at finding apparent problems with the arguments of those who disagree with them, and arguing back against their opponents, they're often oblivious of their own biases.

But it doesn’t matter how many great arguments you can spin out to defend what you believe, if you can’t also perceive where your beliefs might be untrue.

Without self criticism, all your self-supporting arguments amount to little more than spinning your wheels—while you remain stuck in the mud."


Chris Mooney

As posted at DeSmogBlog
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