TheEEStory.com

Another think tank, more lies. The IPA is another organisation that hides the source of its funding to confuse the public about the independence of its views.
They have been responsible for a great deal of misinformation in Australia.

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/3849006.html

None of the following is in any way less credible even one of the heartland documents was faked.

There is a direct Australian link in the Heartland Institute files. Bob Carter, an adjunct research professor at James Cook University, has a long-standing record of denying climate science. Now it is revealed that he is on the payroll of the Heartland Institute, to the tune of $1,667 per month for unspecified work. On his personal webpage, Carter declares that "he receives no research funding from special interest organisations such as environmental groups, energy companies or government departments," a claim that on the scale of truth matches his reporting of climate science.

The IPA is also dedicated to stealing the resources of the Australian people for their billionaire masters.

The government should put in place a Special Economic Zone in Northern Australia. A low tax, low regulation zone would drive continued long term investment in the Australian resource industry.

This is one example of why I choose to believe the the scientists over the the paid mouth pieces that these organisations fund.

WalksOnDirt wrote:

Nobody^8^ wrote:

I don't see how a fee (ie tax) and dividend is any better. The disadvantage of a fee is that this does not put a fixed limit on emissions directly.

How's the European experiment with cap and trade working out? Are carbon allowances still nearly worthless? I think we'd do a lot worse with our whole "corporations are people, too" stance.

I’m not at all up to date with the European carbon scheme, however if the price is low then surely this would mean that business are able to operate within the current cap without having to pay high prices for permits. I suspect there have been some reductions in industrial emissions coupled with a good deal of permits purchased from SE Asia. Despite the stories of some early issues there has been a big reduction in the increase of logging in Asia that would suggest that the cap has in fact reduced emissions that would otherwise have occurred.

WalksOnDirt wrote:

What limit on emissions do you want? We need something very close to zero, and we will need decades to get us there. Can you not see the difference between a simple accounting function (you mined 100 tons of carbon, here's your bill) and what we'll likely get under cap and trade (you mined 100 tones of carbon, but since you produce power with it you are charged for 50 tones. Minus the 30 ton credit you purchased at bankruptcy, and the credit you get from your Malaysian palm oil plantation, means you get this much back).

Cap and trade does require more rigorous enforcement, however the example of palm oil can be used to show how cap and trade can provide a net reduction in emissions where a decrease in emissions in one area can be used to offset emissions in another. This is not possible in the same way with a simple tax, where if there are no reductions that can be made within an industry there is no other alternative than to pay the tax which raises revenue buy does not have the same benefit in reducing emissions.

What limit on emissions do you want?

A cap and trade if implemented correctly could be adjusted by lowering the cap to reduce emissions as fast as the economy can cope Can this get us to zero quick enough? If the cap is reduced to zero over a period of time (decades) then obviously it will however wether the economy can do this without a lot of pain depends on the available technology. Of course this will then depend on the perceived need vs economic cost. Again I think a cap and trade is a better method as a tax does not by itself guarantee any particular reduction.
This is of coarse all dependant on having a relatively honest process, the problem will be when there is any instance of any fraud no matter how minor (which is inevitable in any financial system) this will be used by those such as the heartland institute in a misinformation campaign. The current environment in the US would suggest that this type of scheme is just not possible due to these reasons.
In any case if a Tax is more workable then there is no reason why a tax could not have a big impact, just my understanding is that a Cap and Trade would be more efficient.

WalksOnDirt wrote:

Nobody^8^ wrote:

I'm ok with that too, I was in fact accepting Len's argument above I hope I was clear enough.

But can you see that it is still wrong with anyone else?

I could be missing something but I don’t see a direct or implied link to the holocaust issue, others may be more sensitive in this regard and if this in fact the case then I definitely sympathise and this alone is good enough reason to not use the term so long as this is their genuine reason for concern. I don’t have as much sympathy for those who object to being tagged as deniers in the sense that I have used it as meaning simply someone who denies any possible anthropogenic link to warming, but again if it helps keep the heat out of the debate then that’s ok too.

That's where it seems the US is not capable of this sort of change because the population does not have any trust in their government to implement policy without some form of corruption. why is it that other countries seem to be able to have these discussions and implement changes to taxation?

That's where the lobbyists have already won this debate by destroying any trust that the population has had by running a fear and smear campaign against any sort of government regulation over anything.

WalksOnDirt wrote:

Nobody^8^ wrote:

I will use something other than “denier” for you. Even though this to me has no relation to the completely disgusting Holocaust deniers, if you feel there is an issue then I can understand your offensive.

I'm with Lensman here. If you want a reasonable debate it is important to use neutral language.

I'm ok with that too, I was in fact accepting Len's argument above I hope I was clear enough.

WalksOnDirt wrote:

Nobody^8^ wrote:

I would welcome a debate on how best to go about reducing CO2 emissions. If CO2 emissions are to be reduced in a meaningful way surely a market based approach would be welcomed by those who supposedly believe in the free market. Until replacement technologies are available governments will also need to help with funding of research AND commercialisation.

You seem to be saying that reducing emissions substantially is just not possible without destroying our economies, however what we can be doing now is preparing for the changes that may be required. An emissions cap is perhaps the best tool to allow this to happen as the cap can be set at a level that does not cause too much economic pain and reduced as newer technologies allow more reductions with less cost. Distributing all the income from the permits as tax cuts and reductions or replacement of existing taxes negates any argument that this is a government tax raising exercise. The effect is simply to move the tax pressure from one place to another and give industry a cost incentive to reduce emissions.

The alternative to a market based approach is for governments to directly mandate allowable levels for each business and/or industry whilst picking projects and companies to build replacement technologies. This would seem to be far more communist but oddly enough seems to be the preference of the conservative organisations.

You want the government sticking its nose into every nook and cranny of business and deciding how much CO₂ they can emit? The big winner would be whoever can spend the most on lobbying, which I think would be coal. A far better approach is fee and dividend. But what politician wants to be left out of what could be the biggest gravy train ever to hit Washington D.C.?

That's where it seems the US is not capable of this sort of change because the population does not have any trust in their government to implement policy without some form of corruption. why is it that other countries seem to be able to have these discussions and implement changes to taxation?

I don't see how a fee (ie tax) and dividend is any better. The disadvantage of a fee is that this does not put a fixed limit on emissions directly.

Lensman wrote:

….

Nobody^8^ wrote:

As it is now the position of those who deny that humans are responsible for any dangerous climate change (it's just easier to say deniers, I hope this is a better description for you)...

The term "denier" is a deliberately offensive term, intended to cause the reader to make a comparison with Holocaust deniers.

I will use something other than “denier” for you. Even though this to me has no relation to the completely disgusting Holocaust deniers, if you feel there is an issue then I can understand your offensive.

Lensman wrote:

….

Nobody^8^ wrote:

I guess now there even greater chance that those that believe that there is no AGW conspiracy will be left to watch uneasily as human Co2 emissions are allowed to grow expediently.

I haven't seen much action from the pro-CAGW crowd in actually talking about what might be done to mitigate global warming, if they think it's really a problem. There are things we could try, but it seems they would rather just argue about what the causes are play the blame game. That's not productive; in fact, it's counter-productive because finger-pointing poisons rational debate on the subject.

I find it ironic that the only people on this forum to advocate discussion of what we could actually do to counteract global warming-- not just reduce the rate of increase of CO2 emissions very slightly by cap-and-trade shell game-- are those who, like me, have strong doubts about the claims of Catastrophic Anthropic Global Warming.

I would welcome a debate on how best to go about reducing CO2 emissions. If CO2 emissions are to be reduced in a meaningful way surely a market based approach would be welcomed by those who supposedly believe in the free market. Until replacement technologies are available governments will also need to help with funding of research AND commercialisation.
You seem to be saying that reducing emissions substantially is just not possible without destroying our economies, however what we can be doing now is preparing for the changes that may be required. An emissions cap is perhaps the best tool to allow this to happen as the cap can be set at a level that does not cause too much economic pain and reduced as newer technologies allow more reductions with less cost. Distributing all the income from the permits as tax cuts and reductions or replacement of existing taxes negates any argument that this is a government tax raising exercise. The effect is simply to move the tax pressure from one place to another and give industry a cost incentive to reduce emissions.
The alternative to a market based approach is for governments to directly mandate allowable levels for each business and/or industry whilst picking projects and companies to build replacement technologies. This would seem to be far more communist but oddly enough seems to be the preference of the conservative organisations. [The politics of this is intrinsically a part of the debate, this topic perhaps could have its own thread entirely]

Having further debate about this would be interesting if people could get past the simplistic and unhelpful and even dishonest comments about left wing conspiracies and other such things.

hum wrote:

Nobody^8^ wrote:

[The argument about not releasing the raw data was unfortunately used repeatedly to build the case against Jones and the CRU, however after the briefest of checks it is clear that the release of the raw data was far more complex than simply posting the data publically.

As this data was obtained from perhaps thousands (source anyone?) of various sources and some were commercial and others of some value in regard to some agricultural reasons it was clearly not a simple task to release all of the raw data.
This was a another instance were the case from the denialists seems to have been built from wilful misinformation.

PS The computer codes of the data analysis have been publicly released

Wrong, they used those excuses as strawmen. When CRU and Jones were FOIA'd for the NDA's, agreements and contracts limiting data distribution they would not provide them. Later it was Jones the dog ate them excuse. When asked to supply the data excluding any restricted data Jones again would not comply. Although he was more than happy to share all the data including so called restricted data with his friends, which if NDAs were in place would have been a violation.

Jones should be fired from CRU and removed from the IPCC.

These lies are repeated often enough to make many think they are true.

http://blogs.nature.com/news/2011/07/at_long_la...

With yesterday’s release, raw data from 5,113 weather stations around the globe are now in the public domain. The only data missing are those from 10 stations in Poland. The Polish meteorological service, say CRU officials, refused permittence to have their data publicly released. But CRU reluctantly opted to release station data from Trinidad and Tobago against the Caribbean state’s express wish.

We want to place beyond all doubt our determination to be open with our data and to comply with the ICO’s instruction,” Trevor Davies, UEA’s Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research, said in a statement. “We remain concerned, however, that the forced release of material from a source which has explicitly refused to give permission for release could have some damaging consequences for the UK in international research collaborations

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20739-ok-...

Thomas Peterson, chief scientist at the National Climatic Data Center of the US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and president of the Commission for Climatology at the World Meteorological Organization, agrees there might be a cost to releasing the data.

"I have historic temperature data from automatic weather stations on the Greenland ice sheet that I was able to obtain from Denmark only because I agreed not to release them," he says. "If countries come to expect that sharing of any data with anyone will eventually lead to strong pressure for them to fully release those data, will they be less willing to collaborate in the future?"

Davies is confident that genuine and proper analysis of the raw data will reproduce the same incontrovertible conclusion – that global temperatures are rising. "The conclusion is very robust," he says, explaining that the CRU's dataset of land temperatures tally with those from other independent research groups around the world, including those generated by the NOAA and NASA

And after all this trouble even the sceptics now find that the earth has in fact been warming (BEST etc), the data is out there and there is still no reputable study that has concluded differently.

Last edited Fri, 24 Feb 2012, 4:53pm by EricOlthwaite

Liberty wrote:

cjhepq3r0tynq-w0tuq-rqv=ryuvna0fuopzijoclmn[

to explain: the above is as good, if not better information than we have seen on this site in quite some time

High quality indecipherable information without saying if this is good or bad, seems to be exactly what we love.

Yazzur wrote:

Lens:

I have no problem with whistle blowers, but what Gleick did was wrong. At least he admitted what he did.

The Climategate participants were also wrong, and since they have not come forward, and their identities have been kept hidden and kept secret by all those involved in the hacking, editing, distribution and publishing, that seems more conspiratorial to me than the UK governmental
investigation that found:

"The focus on Professor Jones and CRU has been largely misplaced. On the accusations relating to Professor Jone’s refusal to share raw data and computer codes, the Committee considers that his actions were in line with common practice in the climate science community but that those practices need to change."

http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog...

If the Climategate people had just released all of the information they had, instead of parsing and doing partial releases to create impressions that have mostly been shown to be false, I might have some respect for them as whistle blowers.

As it is, I consider the Climategate releases as just another political hack job similar to what the Heartland Alliance does in many of its releases.

The argument about not releasing the raw data was unfortunately used repeatedly to build the case against Jones and the CRU, however after the briefest of checks it is clear that the release of the raw data was far more complex than simply posting the data publically.

As this data was obtained from perhaps thousands (source anyone?) of various sources and some were commercial and others of some value in regard to some agricultural reasons it was clearly not a simple task to release all of the raw data.
This was a another instance were the case from the denialists seems to have been built from wilful misinformation.

PS The computer codes of the data analysis have been publicly released

Lensman wrote:

Yazzur wrote:

I suppose Gleick's resignations are appropriate given all of the remorse and resignations from the participants of the stolen "climategate" emails. <sarcasm>

My hat is off to the whistle-blowers; those who made public the Climategate and Climategate 2.0 e-mails. My hat would be off to Gleick, too, if he hadn't faked that memo.

It is a travesty of justice that none of those exposed by the Climategate e-mails were arrested for conspiring to destroy evidence requested by a FOIA-- a crime in the UK, where the conspiracy occurred-- or was even fired from his position. In my opinion, the fact that none of them got more than a slap on the wrist is pretty strong evidence of just how influential this confluence of interests is. It may not be an actual coordinated international conspiracy, in the sense that there is no one at the top issuing orders to underlings on how to carry the conspiracy out. But as far as the results go, this confluence of interests has the same effect as an actual international conspiracy.

The whitewash of those climatologists is certainly strong evidence of how deeply entrenched this "Cause" is, and how much political influence they have. But altho that's disappointing, it's not really surprising. After all, the IPCC is composed of not just climatologists, but climatologists and politicians. When it comes to global warming alarmism, there is a confluence of interests between people who are supposed to be scientists prostituting science for their political agenda and for grant money, and politicians looking for a way to get voters to pay attention to them by making them afraid.

One hand washes the other.

Seems like Gleick may have redefined the term own goal. Most likely he destroyed any chance of ever being able to present what may have been somewhat relevant information he had obtained from the Heartland institute by a clumsy attempt to sensationalise what he had found as well as doing a great deal of damage to the climate scientists.

Is it possible that the infamous memo is not a fake, you may have to believe that the Heartland institute and supporters are able to create evidence that this was faked. I'm no believer in complex conspiracies of this type as the sources for this information seem to be widely varied and credible.

I guess now there even greater chance that those that believe that there is no AGW conspiracy will be left to watch uneasily as human Co2 emissions are allowed to grow expediently.

As it is now the position of those who deny that humans are responsible for any dangerous climate change (it's just easier to say deniers, I hope this is a better description for you) that although the planet seems to be warming this is normal and nothing to do with the increase of CO2 levels from 280ppm to 390ppm (approx %40).

We will now just have to wait and see, this would not really be such a catastrophe if this does happen, except the one thing I am certain of is the fact that there are significant delays in the climate system, this is the danger of getting this wrong any corrective action would almost certainly be futile. Hope I'm still totally wrong about this in ten years time but, I still need more evidence to convince me at this point.

Some random links related to the Gleick fiasco (is there anyone left on the planet that doesn't know how to "google" ?:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2104786...

You have to feel a bit sorry for Mr Gleick. I don't think it is the worst crime in the world to give a different name in order to get some pretty damning information. That information revealed that some "independent" and high profile climate change deniers are funded (via Heartland) by big US corporates. Mr Gleick is embarrassed simply for changing his name to get information - he thinks scientists should stick solely to their research and not involve themselves in policy debate. But the ones getting paid by the corporates should be the ones who are embarrassed!

http://forums.hannity.com/showthread.php?p=9987...

http://ethicsalarms.com/2012/02/23/climate-wars...

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?s...

t included, he claimed, plans to create an 'anti-global warming science campaign for grade schools that will dissuade teachers from teaching science'.
Heartland has labelled that document a 'forgery' and says it is now considering legal action against Gleick.
But the environmental activist, who forwarded his finds to to campaigners and journalist, said he was angry with the way the organisation subverted the science for its own ends.pq

wcushman wrote:

Fibb :) wrote:

The vast majority of US corporations pay zero tax because the profit is directly taxable to the owner(s). See tax rules for LLCs and Sub-S corporations.

Furthermore, as has been pointed out many times, corporate taxes are the same as any other corporate expense. They are rolled up into the cost of a companies product and passed along to the consumer. They then become, in reality, a regressive sales tax.

Wcushman, are you trying to say that we should not have corporate taxes?

dvelasco68 wrote:

I have to disagree...

And it references a new study on the Himalayas...

Obviously you chose to ignore half of the article...

Nobody^8^ wrote:

dvelasco68 wrote:

....The polar bears... some off topic nonsense

This is a sadly Pathetic attempt to divert attention from the embarrassment of this discussion. Absolutely no relation in any way to this topic, there are plenty of other topics to post this crap

No their are plenty of topics for this. This topic is related to the outing of the heartland institute's hidden funding of climate change deniers, we would be interested in what you have to say about this topic.

dvelasco68 wrote:

....The polar bears... some off topic nonsense

This is a sadly Pathetic attempt to divert attention from the embarrassment of this discussion. Absolutely no relation in any way to this topic, there are plenty of other topics to post this crap

The title of this Topic is fraudulent.

1st Their no patten of fraud has been proven to exist in climate science

2nd The fraud is being and has has committed by the Heartland Institute

NEW title is "Fraud by climate denial lobby group - Par for the course"

Being associated with a group that is capable of denying the harmful affects of tobacco and fighting against legislation that has saved thousands if not millions of lives should make people reconsider which side of this debate is more likely to be fighting for the greater public good.

Lensman wrote:

A quick glance at the Wikipedia article on "Heartland Institute" reveals that the organization worked with Big Tobacco in trying to discredit the evidence for the adverse health effects of second-hand smoke from cigarettes, and in opposing legislation restricting smoking.

Not surprisingly, the Wikipedia article also shows major contributions to Heartland from Big Oil.

I have no idea why anyone would feel the need to make up anything negative about the Heartland Institute; the facts seem to be damning enough.

While I am personally quite doubtful about the claims of the pro-AGW crowd, at the same time this is no reason to believe the claims of an extremist so-called "think tank" which is paid to defend corporations that make enormous profits by selling products which, when used as advertised, pump incredible amounts of poisons and carcinogens into the air we breathe.

The material from the Heartland institute was posted last week some time

http://theeestory.com/posts/228760/topic

At present we sponsor the
NIPCC to undermine the official United Nation's IPCC reports and paid a team of writers
$388,000 in 2011 to work on a series of editions of Climate Change Reconsidered.

The leak shows how they have spent millions over the years on their campaign to discredit climate science, and their current attempts to manipulate science education.

Have a closer look see what you think, while no surprise given their past support for the Tobacco industry, the lifting of the secrecy of their activities is very welcome. Thanks to Gleick.