De Smog Blog

The purportedly independent report that Dr. Edward Wegman prepared in 2006 for the Congressional Committee on Energy and Commerce was actually a partisan set-up, according to information revealed today.

Wegman, who had presented himself as an impartial "referee" between two "teams" debating the quality of the so-called Hockey Stick graph was, in fact, coached throughout his review by Republican staffer Peter Spencer. Wegman and his colleagues also worked closely with one of the teams (and especially with retired mining stock promoter Stephen McIntyre) to try to replicate criticism of the Hockey Stick graph, while at the same time foregoing contact with the actual authors of the seminal climate reconstruction.

The Hockey Stick refers to a graph (by Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley and Malcolm Hughes) that became a defining image of the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It also became a target for Steve McIntyre and the Guelph University economist Ross McKitrick, who since 2002, at least, has been a paid spokesperson for ExxonMobil-backed think tanks such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) and the Fraser Institute.<!--break-->

According to a detailed analysis by the blogger Deep Climate, McIntyre and McKitrick's criticism of the Hockey Stick graph was aggressively promoted and disseminated by an echo chamber of think tanks and blogs, all of which had financial or ideological associations with fossil fuel industry funders.

Then, in 2005, (and perhaps through the machinations of CEI climate specialist Myron Ebell), Republican Rep. and Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Joe Barton began calling for an investigation into the graph. But Barton rejected an offer from National Academy of Sciences President Ralph Ciccerone to conduct a formal and independent review in the highly professional manner typical of the nation's foremost scientific body. Barton chose, instead, to engage a statistician (Wegman) from one of the most conservative institutions in the country (George Mason University) and to task him with setting up a team to dissect Mann's Hockey Stick.

The result was predictable. Collaborating with McIntyre, Wegman's team recreated and then endorsed the critical view of Michael Mann's work. According to earlier revelations from Deep Climate, Wegman also cribbed - arguably plagiarized - work from Raymond Bradley, lifting whole sections of his 1999 textbook, but periodically changing material or inserting information calculated to cast doubt on the reliability of tree-ring data (the source of the MBH  climate reconstruction). In the most outrageous example, suspiciously unattributed, Wegman's report actually suggested that tree rings might be affected positively by automobile pollution. ("... oxides of nitrogen are formed in internal combustion engines that can be deposited as nitrates also contributing to fertilization of plant materials.")

All this could be dismissed as typical politicking except for two things. First, because this was presented as an independent and impartial review, it is reasonable to ask whether Barton, Wegman, et al, are guilty of misleading Congress, a felony offense.

Second, the same echo chamber that promoted Steve McIntyre's criticism of the Hockey Stick is now fully engaged accusing scientists of manipulating data to increase global concern about climate change. The manipulation of both data and public opinion are certainly evident in this story. Science has most certainly been politicized. But (thanks to Deep Climate's careful research) the record shows that the manipulation and politicization has been bought and paid for by the energy industry and executed by a sprawling network of think tanks and blogs - and by leading Republicans and their staffers.

This is, at the very least, fodder for a Congressional investigation as to whether the Energy and Commerce Committee was, indeed, intentionally and perhaps disastrously misled.

Did Edward Wegman's team commit plagiarism in preparing its 2006 Congressional report on the so-called MBH Hockey Stick? Objectively, yes.

Is there a conspiracy to confuse and distort climate science? Absolutely. If you doubt it, read the John Mashey paper attached (or our book, Climate Cover-up).

Have any crimes been committed? That'll be for a judge to decide. But given that misleading Congress is a felony offense, there might be some justifable nervousness among the people who coached Wegman through his attack on the scientistists behind the Hockey Stick.

The inspiration for these questions, and some fodder for the answers, is presented in painstaking and well-documented detail in the attached paper. Prepared by the computer scientist and entrepreneur John Mashey, it is a roadmap, a reference source and a timeline for the campaign of deceit that began in the 1990s and has come to something of a crescendo with the recent thefts of the East Anglia emails.<!--break-->

Mashey begins with a context-heavy review of the excellent research by the blogger Deep Climate, whose most recent revelations are described in greater detail here.

But Mashey doesn't stop there. He burrows back into the campaign of climate change denial, naming names and describing tactics. He is unfailingly cautious in making accusations, but the weight of his documentation is devastating for scientific sellouts like Dr. S. Fred Singer and for organizations like the Cato Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which have chosen to insert themselves in the the political process and in the public conversation - in a way that is, often, anything but forthright.

This document should be required reading for Congressional investigators and for any reporter who wants to cover this issue credibly.

We have been  told repeatedly, of late, that science has become politicized and that a cabal of conspirators are trying to make us believe something for which they have no evidence. That's absolutely true, but not in the way the Wall Street Journal or Canada's National Post would have you think.

As Mashey documents here, so well, this whole party has been a set-up, with scientists on one side, bound by the rules of evidence and by their own integrity, and think tanks, PR counsellors and their aides and allies on the other side, using any technique aailable  (including, apparently, obtaining, using and disseminating stolen emails), to defend the right of fossil fuel companies to continue, unrestrained, in the sale and distribution of a substance that is threatening the human habitability of planet earth.

We know that the scientists have been telling the truth - a couple of trivial exceptions help prove that rule. Mashey shows that the track record on the other side is considerably more checkered.

An orchestrated campaign is being waged against climate change science to undermine public acceptance of man-made global warming, environment experts. Free-market, anti-climate change think-tanks such as the Atlas Economic Research Foundation in the US and the International Policy Network in the UK have received grants totalling hundreds of thousands of pounds from the multinational energy company ExxonMobil. Both organisations have funded international seminars pulling together climate change deniers from across the globe. <!--break-->

In a painstakingly documented review of the disinformation campaign led by the retired mining promoter Stephen McIntyre and the Fraser Institute economist-for-hire Ross McKitrick, Deep Climate has shown how badly manipulated - and how badly overblown - the so-called "hockey stick controversy" has been in the last seven or eight years.

DC also shows the complicity of think tanks such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Fraser Institute and, perhaps especially, the Canadian journalistic centre of climate change denial, the National Post.

The questionable tactics that McIntyre and McKitrick have used to discredit excellent scientists like Penn State Michael Mann have been on the record for some time. But DC is a tireless researcher, whose patience and hard work are amply demonstrated in this new post. It becomes increasingly clear that while scientists have been building an un undeniable case for the science of global warming, M&M have been working hand-in-hand with people like the denier PR guru Tom Harris to deny it all, anyway.

This post should be mandatory reading for any mainstream media reporter who wants a fair briefing on the integrity of the various voices so often quoted on this story.<!--break-->

There has been an increase in the number of British people who are sceptical about climate change, a poll commissioned by BBC News has suggested.

It showed that 25% of those questioned did not think global warming was happening, an increase of 10% since a similar poll was conducted in November.  The percentage of respondents who said climate change was a reality had fallen from 83% in November to 75%.

The findings show that only 26% of people think "climate change is happening and is now established as largely man-made", only 1% more than those who think there is no global warming.

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The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) has hired two new public relations firms to hock its message in the wake of the disastrous job done by Bonner & Associates. 

ACCCE has retained HDMK, a PR firm with very strong ties to former President George W. Bush and the Republican Party, to manage its national media efforts, while Dan Ronayne, a managing director of the Howard Consulting Group, was retained to work with regional reporters.

HDMK is run by Terry Holt, the national campaign spokesperson for George W. Bush in the 2004 election and the former spokesman for House Minority Leader John Boehner.  Other HDMK partners include Trent Duffy, a former deputy press secretary to President George W. Bush, Jim Morrell, former deputy chief of staff to the House Republican Conference and a speechwriter for former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (R-IL), and Chad Kolton, another long-time Republican communications operative who served in the Bush administration as press secretary at the OMB and FEMA.
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HDMK’s other clients include the Republic of Panama, America’s Health Insurance Plans, the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association and the Real Estate Roundtable.

Holt told the National Journal that HDMK will be "part of the strategy team on message development" for ACCCE.  ACCCE is no doubt hopeful that HDMK will play a more traditional, behind-the-scenes role in promoting the coal industry’s message. 

ACCCE had no such luck with one of the key players in its 2009 PR campaign, Bonner & Associates, the Astroturf shop embroiled in a highly embarrassing scandal when it was caught sending at least a dozen forged letters to Congressmembers urging them to vote against clean energy and climate legislation.

Luckily for ACCCE, HDMK specializes in crisis communications and crisis prevention, which could come in handy for the coal industry if 2010 turns out to be anything like last year.

David Douglass and John Christy (inset) are lousy scientists who flee from structured, peer-reviewed debate and then generously misrepresent the facts in opinion pieces published by ideologically driven websites; at least, that’s the inevitable conclusion from an open letter (attached) from Lawrence Livermore National Lab scientist Ben Santer.

Santer is more measured in his language and criticism. He doesn't call Douglass et al "lousy scientists," but he points out with great care that their science is lousy. In particular, a paper that they had written in the International Journal of Climatology with B.D. Pearson and S. Fred Singer was flawed by a statistical error so egregious that it should never have seen the light of day.

After a writing team led by Santer ripped the article apart – carefully, methodically – Douglass and Christy howled about imagined censorship and manipulation in scientific publishing, but made no actual effort to respond in the journal in question, preferring to take their complaints to websites where no one would double-check their facts.

Now, they have used the theft of the East Anglia emails to revive their complaints, wondering aloud on the right-wingy website American Thinker about whether there is A Climatology Conspiracy?

<!--break-->The argument is pathetic. Subjected to criticism for poor quality work, Douglass, et al, fail to respond to the criticism and then claim a conspiracy to keep them silent. And the consistently unreliable Dr. S. Fred Singer, is now nowhere to be seen, regardless that he was only too happy to earn a publishing credit by lending his name to the original article, and who publicized it in a U.S. National Press Club conference announcing, “Nature rules the climate: Human-produced greenhouse gases are not responsible for global warming.”

This is yet one more example of how the denierguys have used, and will continue to use, the emails stolen from the Climatic Research Unit at the East Anglia University in Norwich, UK. They will scramble out of their holes, take a couple of cheap shots, declare climate science mortally wounded and then, just at the point they might otherwise have adduced evidence, they will disappear. Would that those intervals were longer.   

Penn State University’s inquiry into climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann’s conduct surrounding the emails stolen from the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University concluded there is no evidence to substantiate the claims made by the right-wing media against Mann.

The Penn State panel cleared Dr. Mann of any wrongdoing in three of the four areas it probed, recommending only that a separate panel of faculty members pursue a follow-up investigation into the allegation that Dr. Mann "engaged in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting or reporting research or other scholarly activities."

Dr. Mann’s response to the outcome:
“This is very much the vindication I expected since I am confident I have done nothing wrong.

I fully support the additional inquiry which may be the best way to remove any lingering doubts. I intend to cooperate fully in this matter – as I have since the beginning of the process."

Pete Altman over at NRDC’s Switchboard blog notes: “That’s about as close to a silver bullet as you are going to find in terms of shooting down the conspiracy theorists who are touting their ‘climategate’ nonsense.”

Altman notes that Professor Mann has “has been the victim of an extended vicious and unfounded smear campaign.”

But none of that seems to sink into the brain of the self-titled “Junkman,” Steven Milloy, who instead screams “whitewash” and accuses Penn State of ignoring allegations that were never under question.  Milloy would rather Penn State investigate whether global warming is real to suit his own fantasies that there is a debate on that question.  He just can’t stand the fact that a formal inquiry launched by a prestigious university didn’t end up the way he wanted it to.
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Compare Milloy’s headline “Penn State primes for the Climategate whitewash” with that of many mainstream outlets covering the Penn State inquiry:

Climategate melts away: Global warming expert exonerated – Kansas City Star.

Panel Absolves Climate Scientist – The New York Times.

US 'climategate' scientist all but cleared of misconduct – New Scientist.

'Climategate' inquiry shows scientist didn't falsify data – Montreal Gazette.

Milloy wasn’t the only one to try to spin Penn State’s exoneration of Mann into something it isn’t.  Witness:

Fox News: Penn St. Investigating Scientist Over Research Misconduct

Wall Street Journal:School to Probe Climate Scientist

James Dellingpole at The Telegraph: Michael Mann as innocent as OJ – possibly more so – finds internal Penn State investigation

The right wing outlets who screamed bloody murder over "Climategate" just can’t seem to handle the outcome of the inquiry that found no evidence of the data tampering or interference with information requests that they hoped would emerge.  They can’t tolerate the fact that Dr. Mann was vindicated.  So they resort to spin. 

Why am I not surprised?

People have been emailing over the last few weeks about DeSmogBlog's comment section.

Most are wondering why their comments are not posting even if they're registered as a user. A few, from people I am sure you can guess, are accusing us of censorship, and a few more (sure you can guess those too) are saying its indicative of a drop in visitors.

Of course, the conspiracy theorists in the latter two categories are wrong as they usually are.

The truth of the matter is that the comment sections on DeSmog were turning into useless flame wars that did little to advance the dialogue we want to have here on the site. So, for the time being comments will remain tightly moderated and we will turn them back on to allow registered users to post directly to the site after an adequate cool down period.

We are also developing new functions that will hopefully help the community self-moderate the comments.

So stay tuned.

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Sneaky cyber-thieves have made millions by fraudulently obtaining European greenhouse gas emissions allowances and reselling them.

The scam has hampered trading of the credits, which are seen as an important tool in curbing climate change, in several European countries.  According to Financial Times Deutschland, hackers sent e-mails to several companies in Europe, Japan and New Zealand which appeared to originate from the Potsdam-based German Emissions Trading Authority , part of the EU's Emission Trading System.

The cyber-thieves then exploited the user data that was entered into their spoof Web site to transfer emissions allowances to other accounts, mainly in Denmark and Britain, from which they were quickly resold. <!--break-->

Penn State University has concluded that there is no evidence to substantiate the claims made against climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann surrounding the emails stolen from the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University.

An inquiry panel was set up earlier this year to look at allegations made by right-wing bloggers and media outlets against Penn State University climate scientist, Dr. Michael Mann, relating to the contents of emails stolen from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in London.

On all 4 of the allegations made against Dr. Mann the panel has concluded that there is no evidence to substantiate the claims. 

However, the panel has recommended that the allegation that Dr. Mann "engaged in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting or reporting research or other scholarly activities," be further investigated.

Dr. Mann issued a statement today on the findings, saying that:

"I am very pleased that, after a thorough review, the independent Penn State committee found no evidence to substantiate the allegations against me.

Three of the four allegations have been dismissed completely. Even though no evidence to substantiate the fourth allegation was found, the University administrators thought it best to convene a separate committee of distinguished scientists to resolve any remaining questions about academic procedures.

This is very much the vindication I expected since I am confident I have done nothing wrong.

I fully support the additional inquiry which may be the best way to remove any lingering doubts. I intend to cooperate fully in this matter – as I have since the beginning of the process."

The full report of the inquiry panel can be found here: Concerning the Allegations of Research Misconduct Against Dr. Michael E. Mann

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In late December, Guardian columnist George Monbiot squared off on ABC Australia with the climate-change expert wannabe, Ian Plimer.

Monbiot rips Plimer, and it's very amusing to watch Plimer pretend he's an expert in climate science, despite the fact  that he has no academic background in climate change research and is on the board of directors of no less than three very large mining companies.

Regardless, I hadn't had a chance to see the entire video and just had a chance to watch it in it's entirety. Nobody had told me that near the end of the debate Plimer smears and lies about DeSmogBlog, saying that:

"Why does Mr. Monbiot use blog sites, where the bloggers are paid to smear scientists, this is DeSmogBlog which is paid for by the Suzuki Foundation."

Sorry, Plimer, we don't smear scientists, we simply point out the lack of expertise and fossil fuel industry ties of people like you who are spreading misinformation about the realities of climate change.

DeSmogBlog has never received a single penny from the Suzuki Foundation and Monbiot has never "used" DeSmogBlog.

Here's the last 3rd of the debate, Plimer lies about DeSmogBlog at the 7 minute mark:

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Writing for the UK's Gaurdian news today, Fred Pearce has a very in-depth analysis of how the 'climategate' scandal is bogus and based on climate sceptics' lies.

Pearce explains that,

"Almost all the media and political discussion about the hacked climate emails has been based on brief soundbites publicised by professional sceptics and their blogs. In many cases, these have been taken out of context and twisted to mean something they were never intended to."

Couldn't have said it better myself. The so-called 'climategate' has been hyped by an over-the-top right-wing press and an over-excited gang of bloggers who use everything other than actual scientific research to prove their point.

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Sir David King, the UK’s former chief scientist, strongly believes that the theft of hundreds of emails from the Climatic Research Unit in East Anglia was carried out by highly-paid professionals, perhaps a foreign intelligence agency, and was deliberately designed to destabilize the Copenhagen climate talks last December.

The highly sophisticated hacking operation involved stealing more than 1,000 emails and some 2,000 documents from a backup server at the University which would have been difficult to access remotely. 

According to The Independent newspaper, King believes the hack “was carried out by a team of skilled professionals, either on behalf of a foreign government or at the behest of anti-climate change lobbyists in the United States.” 

"It was a sophisticated and expensive operation. In terms of the expense, there is the American lobby system which is a very likely source of finance. Right now, the American lobbyists are a very likely source of finance for this, so the finger must point to them," he said.
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King, who was Tony Blair's chief scientific adviser for seven years until 2007, said that the hacking and selective leaking of the CRU emails bore all the hallmarks of a coordinated intelligence operation and noted the timing of their release just before the Copenhagen climate conference.

“That [timing] wasn't a coincidence," King believes.  Climate skeptics and deniers have used the stolen emails - private discussions between climate scientists going back 13 years - to claim that global warming is a hoax.

King told The Independent that only “a sophisticated intelligence operation is capable of yielding the sort of results we've seen here."

"Quite simply, it's the sophistication of the operation. I know there's a possibility that they had a very good hacker working for these people, but it was an extraordinarily sophisticated operation. There are several bodies of people who could do this sort of work. These are national intelligence agencies and it seems to me that it was the work of such a group of people," he said.

Since the hackers released only a small fraction of the total number of emails exchanged between the scientists during the targeted period between 1996 to 2009, King believes the hackers selected for the most incriminating phrases relating to possible scientific misconduct and breaches of the Freedom of Information Act.

The growing threat of international cyber crime is a major concern of governments worldwide, as The Independent article notes. 

Given the failure of the media to spend even a moment questioning who was behind the East Anglia CRU hack job, the perpetrator may never be identified.  But this episode clearly demonstrates that governments aren’t the only targets that should be concerned with cyber attacks. 

The CRU hack did not happen in isolation.  There have been other confirmed attempts to infiltrate climate scientists’ offices, such as the attempt at the University of Victoria in Canada, and there may well be more attempts in the future, as the U.S. Congress and the international community continue to work on policy solutions to address climate change.

Whether the media will start paying attention to this emerging threat to scientific openness and transparency remains to be seen.

Yesterday, treesitters from Climate Ground Zero ended a nine day occupation of the Massey Energy owned Bee Tree mine site in southern West Virginia. On Thursday, after an emergency meeting with Governor Joe Manchin, the Raleigh County prosecution office intervened to impose a moratorium on the use of noise horns that Massey was using to deprive the treesitters of sleep.

The treesit represents Climate Ground Zero's most sustained intervention in mountaintop removal mining operations since its campaign of nonviolent direct action began last February. In a final communication from her treesit perch, Amber Nitchman, 19, captured the group's resolve, saying "It's not over until the blasting is stopped."

The protest began on the same day as the debate we liveblogged last week between Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. From Blankenship's comments at that debate, it isn't difficult to understand why activists are targeting Massey Energy. With encouragement from environmental leaders like James Hansen and Al Gore who label the coal fields a front line in the fight to curb climate change, a continued escalation of protest activities in West Virginia seems likely.

In the debate, Blankenship noted that arguments backed by "emotional appeals are typical of the environmental movement." Blankenship, for his part, continuously equates environmental regulations to an effort to ship jobs to India and China (but don't think that stops Massey from doing business in India). What makes Blankenship an effective spokesperson for his views is that he employs his own emotional appeals quite eloquently, and then piggybacks them with the use of industry-sourced or funded statistics that are misleading or false.

Journalists on deadlines limit their coverage to capturing the opposing soundbites of the controversy. Kennedy pointed out that journalists also have an obligation to discern the truth, but the obstacle here seems to be that they are poorly versed in the scientific literature that would equip them to challenge those emotional appeals which are backed by misleading statistics. As a follow-up to our debate coverage and in light of the unfolding events in the coal fields, today we take a closer look at three of Blankenship's more spurious claims.

Blankenship on mercury: "I don't know where all this comes from about mercury killing everything. 1% of mercury in this country is from coal fired power plants, 99% is from somewhere else. You can get anything you want from the internet, you can get anything you want if you pay for it in a study."

Throughout the debate, Blankenship challenged Kennedy's assertion that coal-fired power plants are a large source of industrial mercury pollution. In their 1997 Report to Congress, the EPA looked at a range of peer-reviewed studies and concluded that 32.8% of US mercury emissions came from coal-fired power plants (an updated 1999 EPA inventory increased the percentage to >40%). At the time, it was recognized that this proportion would increase, since regulation of other major sources of industrial mercury pollution had already begun (most notably on municipal waste incinerators, which have reduced their own mercury emissions by 90% in recent years). 

If the EPA attributed 32.8% of mercury emissions to coal-fired power plants in 1997, a number that several environmental groups thought was conservative, how does Blankenship arrive at 1%? The number shows up in a report entitled, 'Reality Check: Straight Talk About MERCURY,' which was produced by the US Chamber of Commerce, where Blankenship is a member of the board and who are also known for their controversial stances against climate change legislation.

The Chamber arrives at 1% by adding in natural sources of mercury and by measuring US coal-fired plant sources against the entire sum of global sources. Adding in natural sources is particularly disingenuous. While it's true that volcanoes, geologic deposits and oceans do account for around 50% of the mercury which lands in the US, this mercury is naturally cycling through the atmosphere, land, and ocean, a process which takes around 3,000 years. Burning coal takes mercury out of its natural stores and overwhelms the cycling process. An MIT review study notes that this has increased mercury in the natural cycle by a factor of 3 to 5. More mercury in the atmosphere and oceans means that more bioaccumulates in the fish we eat (a 2009 study found mercury in every fish tested), which means more neurological and developmental risks for our offspring.

Further, Blankenship and the Chamber cite a single University of Rochester population study of the Seychelles Islands to make a claim that the science surrounding mercury's health effects is unresolved or in doubt. The National Academy of Science, in a review requested by the EPA of all available population studies, concluded that the Seychelles study was an anomaly, and government departments from around the world have felt certain enough to issue health warnings about the consumption of fish and exposure to mercury.

On a folksier note, Blankenship made a claim that people in Japan and India eat a lot of fish, and noted that they seem to be doing ok. If he actually means to suggest that mercury consumption is safe, we suggest that a suitable nickname for Blankenship may be The Mad Hatter.

The Chamber report demonstrates that Blankenship is right about one thing: you can find any number you want on the internet and pay for any result you want in a study.

Blankenship on coal slurry impoundments (paraphrased quote): "The impoundment that gets the most attention in this state gets it because it is above an elementary school, but people fail to mention that this school has been there since I was in grade school."

Blankenship is referring to the locally famous Shumate Creek Slurry Impoundment in Sundial, West Virginia, which holds approximately 2.8 billion gallons of toxic coal byproducts behind a 385 foot tall dam. The dam sits directly above Marshfork Elementary School, which also sits approximately 300 yards from a coal processing facility. In 2005, Ed Wiley, a retired coal mining contractor whose granddaughter was a student at the school, walked from West Virginia to Washington, DC to protest the processing facility's attempt to build a second silo despite evidence that around 91% of the students suffered from asthma or other respiratory problems.

Blasting on a mountaintop removal site above the impoundment continues despite a history of safety violations at the dam. A similar dam in Buffalo Creek, West Virginia failed in 1972, killing 125 people under 132 million gallons of sludge. Across West Virginia, over 100 of these impoundments exist; one is taller than the Hoover Dam.

As Ed Wiley told me after the event, "If that dam has been there since Don Blankenship was in grammar school, he must have failed several years of school, since that site was built in the 80's."

See the permit here, which shows that construction began in 1985. The school was built in the 1930s. Attempts to contact Massey representatives for clarification were not returned.

Blankenship on Climate Change: "What's been missed in this country, even under the Bush administration, is that we've made our boilers, and our refrigerators, and our air conditioners so efficient that we actually reduced carbon emissions. The US industries since 1990 may be the only industry in the world that complied with the Kyoto agreement, but its been for a bad reason because its meant a lot of lost jobs and transferred a lot of industry overseas."

The quote is transcribed directly, and it's unclear what is meant by his statement that US industries since 1990 have complied with Kyoto. Follow-up emails to Blankenship's press team were not returned. Plainly, this is just not true. 

*Photo credit: Climate Ground Zero

The Obama administration moved vigorously on two fronts Friday to promote nuclear power, proposing to triple federal loan guarantees for new projects and appointing a high-level panel to study what to do with nuclear waste. Administration officials confirmed that their federal budget request next week for 2011 would raise potential loan guarantees to more than $54 billion from $18.5 billion. <!--break-->

Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden has called for the world to boycott American goods and the U.S. dollar, blaming the United States and other industrialized countries for global warming, according to a new audiotape.

In the tape, bin Laden warned of the dangers of climate change and said that the way to stop it is to bring "the wheels of the American economy" to a halt. He blamed Western industrialized nations for hunger, desertification and floods across the globe, and called for "drastic solutions" to global warming, and "not solutions that partially reduce the effect of climate change." <!--break-->

When it comes to the art of political rhetoric there is nothing more effective then the straw man technique.

It's simple: instead of using sound logic and evidence to discredit an idea or policy, just brand an individual as representative of the idea and then knock them down.

On the issue of climate change, you can see this technique in action with the right-wing Commonwealth Foundation trying to discredit the work of a single climate expert, Dr. Michael Mann, as a means of discrediting the entire body of climate change science.

The Commonwealth Foundation recently published a "policy brief" called Climategate & Penn State, a 12-page attack that tries to frame Dr. Mann as the orchestrator behind some grand conspiracy, which is the key to a good stick man attack.

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Once Mann is painted as the red-robed leader of the Freemason conspiracy to take over the world, the Commonwealth Foundation can then move on to discrediting his character which they do repeatedly throughout their policy brief, saying things like: "Dr. Mann is quick to lash out at anyone questioning his research data, methods, or techniques, rather than fostering a collegial exchange of ideas..." Stick man propped up, stickman kicked down and now on to the bigger conclusion:

Perfect execution! I give it nine-and-a-half points for exaggeration and a full ten points for ridiculousness!

First off, Dr. Mann is a scientist with a great understanding of the issues pertaining to his area of expertise and his research is unparalleled in peer-reviewed research. The only people who harp on about Mann's "hockey stick" are Republican politicians like Senator James Inhofe and right wing think tanks like the Common Wealth Foundation and the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

To prop Mann up as the pillar of the entire climate science community is also ridiculous. There are thousands of papers published by thousands of researchers over the years showing multiple lines of evidence for climate change. So if the Commonwealth's attack on Dr. Mann is not logical, then there must be another motivation and when it comes to the illogical, the first place I turn for an explanation is politics.

As I side note, this is usually when I ask myself WWKRD? [What Would Karl Rove Do?]

The Commonwealth Foundation, or the Commonwealth Foundation for Public Policy Alternatives as they are also called, is backed by a full range of right-wing ideologues, climate deniers, tea party activists and big industry cheerleaders.

In the summer of 2009, the Commonwealth Foundation was one of the front groups behind the Astroturf "Energy Citizens" rallies organized and paid for by the oil companies comprising the American Petroleum Institute.

On the Commonwealth board sits Frederick W. Anton III, the head of the Pennsylvania Manufacturer's Association, who's homepage runs a continous stream of articles denying the realities of climate change.

Another Commonwealth Foundation board member is entrepreneur and Tea Party activist Glenn Meakem an outspoken climate science denier.

I could go on, but I think you get the idea. This attack on Mann is about politics and not about science.

After all, if the Commonwealth Foundation cared about the science of climate change, why wouldn't they put their money into research to prove their conclusions with actual evidence instead of spending it on straw men?

We're delighted to report that the journal Nature has just published a very flattering review of Climate Cover-up.

Reviewer Candis Callison, an Assistant Professor in the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of British Columbia, writes:

(DeSmogBlog co-founder James) Hoggan and Littlemore's arguments will not be new to followers of climate-change debates, but their narrative deftly exposes a landscape of denial that is unrelenting, extensive, international and tactically rich. It is a convincing and riveting tale of conspiracy that gives context to the e-mails leaked last year from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK, and the besieged sense one gets from the communications of scientists caught in the vortex of efforts to unseat their research.

Callison wraps up the review with this:

Climate Cover-Up tackles brilliantly the strategies deployed when messages that are “tested for effectiveness, but not accuracy” are used to spread doubt about climate change. The authors' solution is to offer a prescription for navigating expertise and to demand leadership with the courage to act. To use their metaphor, this is what is needed before we all end up like lemmings, plunging over the cliff together.

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A new report published jointly by Yale University and George Mason University finds that Americans are much less concerned about climate change than they were just a year ago.  Fifty-seven percent of Americans polled believe climate change is happening, compared with a figure of 71 percent in October 2008, a 14 point drop. 

The reason ought to be clear.  The climate confusion campaign - waged by the like of Americans for Prosperity, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Competitive Enterprise Institute, American Petroleum Institute and American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) - is alive and well, and obviously still inflicting damage.
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According to the study, only 47 percent of Americans think global warming is caused mostly by human activities, a 10 point drop.  Only 50 percent of Americans now say they are "somewhat" or "very worried" about global warming, a 13-point decrease.

The report, "Climate Change in the American Mind,"[PDF] reveals that Americans are increasingly distrustful of scientists, politicians and the media concerning climate change.  The public’s trust in scientists dropped nine points from 83 to 74 percent, while trust in the mainstream news media’s coverage of climate change fell from 47 percent in 2008 to 36 percent now.

Anthony Leiserowitz, principal investigator and director of the Yale Project on Climate Change, told CNN: "I'm not surprised by the direction of the results but I am surprised at the magnitude of them.  These are steep drop offs and this is despite the fact that, if anything, the climate science is getting stronger and more concerning over the past year."

Leiserowitz points to the damage caused by “Climategate” and “Glaciergate.”  He is partially right; those scandals did cause damage.  Unfortunately the damage was inflicted on climate scientists.

The real let-down was the media’s obsession with the mythology that scientists had somehow made up global warming by cooking the data.  Anyone who took the time to review the emails or the glacial records knows that assertion is patently false. 

The real damage caused by these scandals resulted from the lazy reporting done by most journalists on the subject.  The media failed to report the real story of “Climategate” - that a crime was committed by thieves who stole from a prestigious university in order to further an agenda of harassment against climate scientists.  And while “Glaciergate” was an embarrassing screw-up by the IPCC, it didn’t change the fact that glaciers are melting worldwide, causing sea level rise that is already affecting coastal communities. 

In both of these cases, and in general, the media should shoulder the bulk of the responsibility, failing to remind the public that the body of science proving human-caused climate change is vast and global, published in peer-reviewed journals, and validated by major scientific bodies the world over.

Readers of DeSmog Blog know well that these recent polling results have much more to do with the decades-long confusion campaign designed by polluting interests to keep the public in the dark about how serious climate change really is.  

"There is a real need for improved public education and communication on this critical issue. The science is getting stronger and public opinion is going in the opposite direction," Leiserowitz says. 

That’s an understatement. 

This research underscores my view that climate advocates are incompetent communicators.  With all the science in the world behind us, and a good deal of the public credibility, we still can't win a debate with people who have all the facts working against them.

Why do we bring a knife to the gunfight with the likes of CEI and the API?  As someone recently said, it’s like the Boy Scouts taking on the Mafia.

It’s time to change all that.  Advocates need to get their hands dirty and scientists need to get out of the office and communicate directly with the public about this urgent crisis.

Whether the American public believes it or not, climate change will continue to threaten American jobs, national security and health.  So we’d better all get better at explaining that reality.