according to the Federal Election Committee. CREW has the details.

That’s what the Department of Homeland Security says in a form obtained by ABC News. As a result, anti-terror funds for New York City were cut by 40%, from $207.5 million in 2005 to $124.4 million in 2006.

An advertisement by the Exxon-funded Competitive Enterprise Institute used a study to claim that the “Antarctic ice sheet is getting thicker, not thinner” as a way of casting doubt on global warming science.

The author of the study, Curt Davis, issued a press release in response calling CEI’s ad a “deliberate effort to confuse and mislead the public about the global warming debate.” Davis noted that his finding were limited to the interior of the eastern portion of Antarctica and more snow was “a predicted consequence of global warming” as the ocean temperature warms.

In a National Review cover story, Steorts used a similar tact with Davis’s study. He used it to suggest all of Antarctica was gaining ice and cast doubt on global warming science. Nevertheless, he has repeatedly insisted that Davis’s criticism of CEI do not apply to him:

Rehashing its objection to the way I used a study by Curt Davis, Think Progress offers, for the second time, a link to a document detailing Davis’s concerns with the way the Competitive Enterprise Institute cited that study…those criticisms aren’t applicable to my article.

ThinkProgress talked to Curt Davis this morning. This is what he had to say:

When [Steorts] quoted my study he misrepresented it just like CEI did because he reported this as representative of the entire Antarctic ice sheet. I did not report a result for the entire Antarctic ice sheet. We know from other studies the coastal areas are losing lots of ice.

In his first response to our criticism, Steorts acknowledged that he falsely claimed Davis’s study applied to all of Antarctica but said it was inconsequential. Doing some calculations, Steorts asserted that even if you factor in Western Antarctica and costal regions, the continent is gaining mass.

Davis told me that Steorts “did his own math. But his math his wrong.” He assumes that ice lost on the coast has the same density as snow gained in the interior of Eastern Antarctica. Actually, ice is about three times more dense. (Even if Steorts got his math right, the data he is using for the coasts isn’t reliable enough to make such a comparison. That’s why it wasn’t included in Davis’s study.)

How much deeper a hole is Steorts going to dig himself? Only time will tell.

UPDATE: Davis writes in to more precisely describe how Steorts got his math wrong: Read more

who said Iraq is a “disaster,” demanding to know his real name, address, and “when you’re gonna be in Las Vegas” [for Yearly Kos]. (Listen here.)

Jason Steorts is on the defensive about his National Review cover story on global warming “Scare of the Century.” Steorts’s article seeks to dismiss the conclusion of thousands of climate scientists on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that global warming is real, the result of human activity and, if unmitigated, will have grave consequences.

In his latest response to our critique, Steorts enlists James Hansen – the NASA climate scientist who was famously muzzled by the Bush administration for his outspoken views about the dangers of global warming – to bolster his point. Steorts quotes Hansen as saying “the IPCC scenarios are unduly pessimistic.”

Steorts never links to Hansen’s actual writing, but to a blog written by fellow climate skeptics characterizing Hansen’s work. Here’s what James Hansen actually said:

There are reasons to believe that the IPCC scenarios are unduly pessimistic. First, they ignore changes in emissions, some already underway, due to concerns about global warming. Second, they assume that true air pollution will continue to get worse, with O3, CH4 and BC all greater in 2050 than in 2000. Third, they give short shrift to technology advances that can reduce emissions in the next 50 years.

In other words, Hansen’s article is a call to action. He argues that we can reduce the impact of global warming if we limit carbon dioxide emissions, control air pollution and adopt new technologies. Here’s how the same article begins:

Global warming is real, and the melting ice is an apt portent of potentially disastrous consequences… Study of these forcing agents shows that global warming can be slowed, and stopped, with practical actions that yield a cleaner, healthier atmosphere.

Steorts uses the same tactic when he notes that Hansen “looked at the instrumental record and predicted 0.75 degrees of warming by 2050.” Actually Hansen predicts that amount of warming if the growth in air pollutants and carbon dioxide emissions can be stopped.

Steorts takes a couple of words from Hansen’s call to action totally out of context to argue that action is unnecessary. This isn’t a real argument, it’s a shell game.