“Sold out… ?! No way. Cannot be true.” I swore to myself. In all of its awkward history, The Heartland Institute’s conferences for climate change deniers have never sold out. This year it did, and I wanted in. These events aren’t something to look forward to. It’s mostly angry, aged white men in suits, lying to themselves about climate change for two days straight in sterile air conditioning, safe from the evils of sun and breeze. But my job is to keep tabs on these folks, so I spend a lot of time in the dungeons of denial. This year, after a troubled recent history, Heartland hosted their tenth International Conference on Climate Change, or #ICCC10, in a much smaller space: the basement of the Washington Court Hotel, here in the District of Columbia. Reluctantly, I emailed Jim Lakely, Heartland’s communications director, to get on the waiting list. Jim and I have a strained relationship from past encounters, but I was banking on Heartland’s “come one, come all” invitations, which reasonable people tend to ignore once they see Heartland’s work. I never heard back from Jim, but decided to go anyway. I’m not a journalist, I work at Greenpeace and that affiliation comes with plenty of apprehension in the world of corporate lobbying. Ironically, Jim Lakely was the first person I saw when I arrived at the hotel, standing outside in the oppressive heat, sucking down a nice, healthy cigarette. This was fitting: Heartland is on Big Tobacco’s payroll and still downplays the health hazards of smoking.
What finally got me kicked out was a very short interaction with Dr. Willie Soon, an aerospace engineer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who says “too much ice is really bad for polar bears.” Documents obtained by Greenpeace and the Climate Investigations Center show Soon has been exclusively financed by fossil fuel companies, their lobbying organizations and dark money nonprofits with known ties to industry. An expose of Dr. Soon in the New York Times last February revealed how the discredited scientist promised coal utility Southern Company “deliverables” in the form of undermining climate policies discussed by Congress, and attacks on Kansas clean energy incentives for the Charles Koch Foundation. These revelations sparked an ongoing investigation of Dr. Soon’s conduct by his employer. The public and the press were shocked, but this is routine for Dr. Soon. He’s been taking industry money for over a decade, pushing his discredited analysis with persistence even as climate scientists around the world pick apart his empty theory. Funnily enough, even other climate denier scientists don’t think much of Dr. Soon’s research. Here’s Roy Spencer:
I have gotten three posts from you in 5 minutes. Are you filing you blog reports while on a plane?
getting ready to fly
While Roy Spencer appears at the denial HQ in the U.S, Prof Judith Curry is invited to speak in the British House of Lords, by Lord Lawson of the GWPF. Qualified deniers are getting very thin on the ground and their names are getting eminently more noticeable. If she appears in the houses I wonder is she will pop into Fleet Street for another David Rose Daily Mail denial piece, he’d better get cherry picking in case.
“UK Climate Deniers Invite American Sceptic Judith Curry to Speak in the House of Lords”
http://www.desmog.uk/2015/06/16/uk-climate-deniers-invite-american-sceptic-judith-curry-speak-house-lords
Wow, and off-handed slag at RSS by Roy Spencer.
I remember learning (during the climate-gate hacks in 2009) that Roy Spencer and John Christy of UAH had published faulty data which was first pointed out by Mears and Wentz of RSS in 2005 in “Science Magazine” (the publication of the American Associated for the Advancement of Science). You can still read the original paper here: http://images.remss.com/papers/mears_science_2005.pdf
This paper is too technical for most citizens so let me summarize by saying: RSS claims UAH calculations of satellite position data involved a few algebraic errors including one which used the wrong “sign” on one of the parameters. Spencer and Christy acknowledge these errors in the “Letters” section of that magazine later the same year.
Keep in mind that both Spencer and Christy stuck to their public positions during and after this debacle knowing that no one from the popular media would ever read a peer-reviewed publication -or- bring up the subject (so are they scientists or politicians?). For example, Spencer appeared later on the Rush Limbaugh radio program and none of this bad-math was ever mentioned.
Honestly don’t know how Roy sleeps at night. Solving global warming kills millions of people? Now there’s a hot whopper. I suppose quitting smoking kills millions too, eh Roy?
Does Roy sleep at night? Most sociopaths sleep quite well, since they are out of touch with the reality of their “sins”. It’s interesting that Roy should so “disrespect” Willie Soon, someone who ranks far higher on the Heartland Whores list than he does. Will their masters have words with Roy about that?
Of course, Roy is typical in that he can dish it out but can’t take it. Some quotes from the preface to the paperback edition (2012) of “The Great Global Warming Blunder”.
“Since the original publication of TGGWB(2010)…there have been several concerted attempts to discredit the central thesis…public ridicule…pressure on scientific journal editors to not publish our research…some scientists have taken to calling researchers like me ‘climate change deniers’…despite the attacks, I continue to stand behind our research 100 percent” (except when he and Christy have had to admit their errors and take their flawed “research” back). Anyone who can get a copy of the paperback edition of TGGWB should read the preface—it is just over two pages of the worst sort of whining and deluded self-justification
Roy closes with “…scientists have been digging in their heels in spite of mounting evidence that they could be wrong…public opinion has shifted away from global warming having a predominantly human cause…the IPCC and its scientist-cheerleaders seem increasingly disconnected from the citizens who financially support them…”.
Written in March 2011, and repeated by Roy and other deniers ad infinitum in an attempt to make it true. The question of whether Roy and Christy are scientists or politicians is answered right there in that closing—only a politician would deny the science and suggest that “public opinion” should be the basis for formulating policy regarding global warming.