Climate Change Reconsidered - again

TPP is honored to have selected to receive a copy of a Summary for Policymakers, Climate Change Reconsidered II: Biological Impacts (2014), a publication from NIPCC (Nongovernmental International Panel of Climate Change), not to be confused by the UN’s IPCC and their recent report on climate change.  The publication is a gift to TPP from Joseph L. Bast, President of the Heartland Institute (cost $8.95).  According to Joseph’s accompanying letter, “These findings disagree sharply with the alarmist findings of IPCC. As a trustee charged with safeguarding the finances of your institution and ensuring the integrity of its educational offerings [TPP’s alter ego served on his university’s foundation board for a decade], you should be well-informed on this controversial issue.  If your faculty is telling students “the science is settled” on climate change, and if your institution is spending millions of dollars on “sustainability” projects in the name of battling global warming, you should be crying foul.”

Wow!  Well, TPP will take a few minutes to examine this report and discuss it with colleagues and friends, and faithful blog readers too. 

This is a classic of denialism (others aren't so slick), and no one does it better than the Heartland Institute.  Without a bit of skepticism, without the experience to be able to spot the differences between science and phony science, without knowing enough science, you could be easily fooled. 

First, the Heartland Institute exists to obfuscate, confuse, and counter science, and they are good at it, the best corporate money can buy.  They figured out their basic tactic denying that smoking caused any health problems. Now Heartland is funded by ExxonMobil, American Petroleum Institute, and the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, all of whom are concerned that efforts to limit greenhouse gases might cut into their bottom line. 

Second, how can you know this publication is denial BS?  A good part of this document’s message is that carbon dioxide is good for the environment and makes plants grow better.  If you look at the references, and bear in mind this is just a summary and probably not the full set of reference (they say thousands), you see something curious.  The four sources about CO₂ and plants were published in 1902-1904, 1918, 1978, and 1983, and because they are included in the summary they must be really important ones.  Absolutely no studies are referenced that were done since scientists started to wonder and worry about climate change and carbon dioxide. That tells you a lot right there. One of the best, and only, long term studies of carbon dioxide and tropical tree growth was published in 2003 in the USA’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Clark, D.A., S.C. Piper, C.D. Keeling, and D.B. Clark. 2003. Tropical rain forest tree growth and atmospheric carbon dynamics linked to interannual temperature variation during 1984-2000. PNAS 100(10):5852-5857.), and if this study isn’t cited (or any of the 28 papers published by the principle authors (the Clarks) since 2003 then the publication is not an honest survey of  the biological impacts of carbon dioxide. 

Third, Heartland is very good at telling half a story. Increased carbon dioxide does increase photosynthesis and plants grow faster. But the other half of the story is that as the temperature goes up, so does photorespiration, and plants lose more fixed carbon, and at the same time, the rate of photosynthesis slows down such that the might be a tipping point.  Another recent report shows that enhanced carbon dioxide reduces the nutritional value of vegetation, so in light of that, the NIPCC’s conclusion that “The evidence is overwhelming that it [increased carbon dioxide concentration] has and will continue to help plants thrive, leading to …more food for a growing human population”, seems a bit over optimistic, and TPP remains under whelmed by the evidence presented.

So, that’s the short version, but without question this publication will fool lots of people and make for lots of press by those (and the politicians they've bought) whose fiscal interests are threatened by possible actions to slow global warming. 

The Heartland Institute - helping teachers get climate change "right"!

A nice booklet was mailed to TPP; it's titled Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science.  As a member of a number of conservation and scientific groups with major outreach functions, the booklet did not seem out of place until a careful look revealed that this was a publication from the Heartland Institute, a bought-and-paid-for science denial factory.  Teachers are urged to read this document and use it's facts and conclusions in their teaching.  The report was conducted by the “Nongovernmental International Panel of Climate Change” (NIPCC). Both the appearance of the report, it's title, and it's source acronym are intended to look and sound just like the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and it's report on climate change Climate Change 2013: The physical science basis. This is a typical Heartland ruse to fool the unwary. Spoiler alert: the NIPCC doesn't find any evidence to suggest human activities have anything to do with climate change. And there's no evidence that smoking harms you or negatively affects your health either.  Yes, it's that Heartland Institute.  And the NIPCC report is replete with sciency citations and references, and authors with impressive sounding titles, foremost this and that.  A few years ago TPP let a graduate seminar dissect one of these type of reports, and they are all done the same way.  Data, facts, and conclusions are taken out of context, or cited selectively, i.e., only counting the ones that support their position, and ignoring those that don't agree with your position. Some of the original reports actually reached diametrically opposite conclusions to what they were cited to support.  The authors, rather than being real academics, were hired guns.  In other words, it was scientifically dishonest, from front to back. It's hard to argue policy; it's easier to pretend the science supporting climate change is uncertain, iffy, or politically motivated and this is the Heartland Institutes stock and trade.  And here's the biggest laugh; the NIPCC report starts by stating it was conducted under no political pressure.  That's actually true because the report was paid for by corporations that think science, real science, might result in policies that they won't like, like cleaning up their CO2 pollution. A recent study found that the majority of all the CO2 of human origins could be traced to just 90 corporations, and if they really were people they might have a conscience or a worry about what they are doing to all of us. And you can bet the money that paid for the NIPCC report came from among those 90. If you want to read more here's a link to the National Center for Science Education and their article on this report.  So maybe TPP will use their report for teaching, but he bets his students will figure out the ruse, again.

State Farm hurts the Heartland (Institute)

In north central Lincolnland the corporate headquarters of State Farm Insurance arise from the maize and soybean desert like a black monolith reminiscent of the scifi movie 2001.  The president once told me in a polite email, in response to my criticism of their failure to accept climate change, that the jury was still out and he indicated that the SF corporate position was in line with that of many "experts", real experts, not just a university biologist whose opinion just doesn't count for very much.  But thank you for your concern and long association with our company.  Hello, Allstate!  Well, of course those experts may well have been the Heartland Institute's experts, those professional deniers and corporate shills.  Here's an open letter to SF from a climate scientist announcing his decision to change insurers, using the free market approach to influence their corporate behavior, and pointing out how doing nothing about the situation is going to do nothing but hurt their bottom line.  Now SF has withdrawn its support from Heartland because of its despicable ad campaign the Phactor mentioned the other day.    

Mailbag - Conference Invitation

Wow!  The 7th International Conference of Climate Change Denialism is being hosted by Heartland Institute those wonderful people who used to shill for Big Tobacco by denying that smoking was harmful.  Here's some of the insightful questions that will be addressed by "Real Science" to provide you with "Real Choices".  Is carbon dioxide "pollution" or a boon to human and plant life?  Would future warming be harmful or beneficial?  In man-made global warming a fact or a theory? Sounds like Heartland has been learning from the Discovery Institute.  But you know only us left-wing nut cases, mad scientists, and environmental terrorists actually believe these things, which raises the question of why if you are only trying to counter a few far left crazies, is the HI spending so much money to throw a conference and produce all those "real science" billboards?  You would just ignore fringe cranks because obviously main line science would be on your side.  So right away you smell something a bit off.  So even though the world's leading climate scientists, policy experts, and political leaders will be at the conference, us crazies have field work to do, more of that unreal science.  

Confirming your suspicions on climate change denial

Particularly with the topic of climate change denialism, it was pretty easy for us skeptics to believe that corporations and individuals whose fiscal interests are wrapped up in polluting businesses were promoting denialism by paying think tanks, even pseudothink tanks, to produce counter arguments, counter "studies", to convince people that the issue is still a matter of some debate, something still disputed, so reasonable, but gullible, people still might think inaction is OK or maybe even warranted.  Now someone has spilled the beans on the Heartland Institute, that wonderful organization that pioneered denialism for the tobacco industry.  And it worked so well for so long that it only made sense to use their tobacco-causes-cancer denialism play-book on climate change.  You can find all the details in some leaked documents via Greg Laden's blog.  The best part is how you portray climate change as "uncertain and controversial" as a means of dissuading teachers from teaching science!  Yes, keep them uneducated about science; they're just so much more gullible that way.  An awful lot of people will be very defensive, if not downright belligerent, because it isn't fun to find out you've been played.  The same tactic has worked pretty well for religious opposition to evolution too.  And why shouldn't it?  Grifters know that the same old cons continue to work.