While the hacked e-mails may reveal that scientists might not have nice things to say about climate change deniers at times, they do nothing to change the scientific consensus that carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel use are raising temperatures and making oceans more acidic. As the right attempts to use the Climategate story to derail the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference this week, arctic sea ice is still at historically low levels, Australia is still on fire, the northern United Kingdom is still underwater, the world’s glaciers are still disappearing and today NOAA confirmed that not only is it the hottest decade in history, but 2009 was one of the hottest years in history. But how did the right-wing noise machine hijack the debate?

The methods for the right-wing political hit machine were honed during the Clinton years. Columnist and language-guru William Safire, a former aide to actual Watergate crook President Nixon, attached “-gate” to any minor post-Nixon incident as a “rhetorical legerdemain” intended “to establish moral equivalence.” (See phony manufactured scandals “Travelgate,” “Whitewatergate,” etc.) A right-wing echo chamber — including the Rev. Moon-funded Washington Times, the Wall Street Journal editorial page, talk radio, and the constellation of various conservative front groups and think tanks — would then blare the scandal incessantly, regardless of the truth. But the more troubling aspect of this gimmick is the increasing willingness for traditional media outlets, from the Evening News to the Washington Post, to largely reprint unfounded right-wing smears without context or critical reporting.

One of the most successful coups for right-wing hit men was the “SwiftBoat” campaign, a well financed effort orchestrated by lobbyists and Bush allies to smear Sen. John Kerry’s (D-MA) war record. But “Climategate” is no different, with many of the same conservatives actors playing their respective roles:

(Cross-posted from the Wonk Room. Click MORE to read the Wonk Room’s timeline of Climategate)

Nov. 17:

– RealClimate blogger Gavin Schmidt realized that someone was hacking his computer and downloading 160MB of files from a Turkish IP address. About an hour after the intrusion, a mysterious commenter at the climate skeptic blog Climate Audit posted a link to the hacked files with a note reading: “A miracle just happened.” Schmidt noted that, “four downloads occurred from that link while the file was still there (it no longer is).”

Nov. 19:

– Hackers then used a computer in Saudi Arabia to post the stolen e-mails, stored on a Russian server, on the climate skeptic website Air Vent.

– Skeptic blog “Watts Up With That” curiously is among the first blogs to posts the hacked e-mails.

– Chris Horner, an operative of the Koch Industries/ExxonMobil-funded Competitive Enterprise Institute, blogged giddily at National Review that although he had not been “able to fully digest this at present,” “the blue dress moment may have arrived” on climate science.

– Sarah Palin appears on Fox News’ O’Reilly Factor to discuss her new book. Palin and O’Reilly compare a young man who briefly hacked into her e-mail account in 2008, calling the incident “extremely disconcerting and disruptive” and “Watergate-lite.” O’Reilly and Plain do not discussed the hacked climate e-mails.

Nov. 20:

– In a front page article, the New York Times’ Andy Revkin reports that the e-mails “might lend themselves to being interpreted as sinister.”

– Myron Ebell, of the Koch Industries/ExxonMobil-funded Competitive Enterprise Institute, releases a statement pointing to the stolen e-mails to conclude that global warming science is “phony.”

– Reading reports on right-wing blogs on air, Rush Limbaugh dedicates a segment to the hacked e-mails, claiming they vindicate his belief that global warming does not exist.

– Conservative Ed Morrissey concluded the e-mails prove global warming is “not science; it’s religious belief.”

– Right-wing blogger Michelle Malkin cheers “the global warming scandal of the century,” adding: “The Chicago Way is the Global Warming Mob Way.”

– ExxonMobil-funded front group FreedomWorks blasts out an e-mail asking “Has the Global Warming Lie and Conspiracy Been Truly Exposed?”

– Marc Morano, a former Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) staffer who helps to distribute climate change denying propaganda to a network of news outlets and conservative organizations, broadcasts Climategate to talk radio.

— The Wall Street Journal’s environmental blog publicizes the conservative blogosphere’s furor: “this should get interesting … Maybe this will spice things up.”

Nov. 22:

– Sen. David Vitter’s (R-LA) staff distributes a letter claiming the stolen e-mails reveal what “could well be the greatest act of scientific fraud in history.”

Nov. 23:

– Heralding the stolen e-mails, infamous climate science skeptic Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) call for congressional investigations against climate scientists.

– Fox News’ Fox Nation headlines the e-mails: “Global Warming’s Waterloo”

– Glenn Beck devotes both his radio and Fox News program to covering Climategate, claims the e-mails show a “brand new reality” on climate science.

– Investors’ Business Daily editorializes that the e-mails show that global warming is “junk science.”

– The ExxonMobil-funded Heritage Foundation publicizes the stolen e-mails.

– Right-wing activist Viscount Monckton says climate scientists are “criminals.”

Nov. 24:

– Fox News’ Stu Varney begins his daily coverage of Climategate. He continues to attack global warming science, using the e-mails, on both the Fox News and Fox Business network.

– Washington Times editorial board, Drudge Report, both chime in to claim hacked e-mails show global warming is not real.

Nov. 29:

– Fox News regular Andrew Breitbart calls for climate scientists to be killed over Climategate.

Nov. 30:

– Rep. Candace Miller (R-MI) issues a statement to demand for an investigation of Climategate, and begins speaking about it on the floor of the House. In the following week, Reps Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI), Darrell Issa (R-CA), John Linder (R-GA), Bill Shuster (R-PA), Joe Barton (R-TX), Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-MO), Dana Rohrbacher (R-CA), Mike Rogers (R-MI), Dan Burton (R-IN), Steve Scalise (R-LA), Greg Walden (R-OR) and Charlie Dent (R-PA) begin blasting press releases on the subject.

Dec. 1:

– Newt Gingrich, who only 2 years ago said America must act “urgently” to address climate change, seizes on the stolen e-mails to spread skepticism of global warming science. Gingrich’s political attack group, ASWF, is heavily funded by coal interests.

Dec. 2:

– Right-wing billionaire David Koch, of the oil empire Koch Industries, sends his front group Americans for Prosperity to attend the Copenhagen conference to attempt to hijack the debate. AFP intends to “expose” the science using the stolen e-mails.

Dec. 3:

– Canada’s National Post reports that burglars and hackers have been attacking the Canadian Center for Climate Modeling and Analysis at the University of Victoria in British Columbia. In the lead up to the Copenhagen conference, Andrew Weaver — a University of Victoria scientist and key contributor to the Nobel prize-winning work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — noted that his campus office was broken into twice and that a dead computer was stolen and papers were rummaged through.

– Saudi Arabian climate negotiators for the Copenhagen summit endorse Climategate, charging that the e-mail show “there is no relationship whatsoever between human activities and climate change.”

– Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade says “damning” e-mails show scientists who “think … Antartica is becoming like the Bahamas.”

Dec. 4:

– NBC’s Nightly News with Brian Williams adopts right-wing Climategate smear: “Have the books been cooked on climate change?”

Dec. 7:

– ExxonMobil-funded think tanks the Heartland Institute and the National Center for Policy Analysis publicize the e-mails to “discredit” global warming science.

Dec. 8:

– The Wall Street Journal accuses climate scientists of being Stalinists.

– Fox News devotes a segment to a right-wing Rasmussen poll with a graphic that claims 120 percent of the public believes scientists falsified global warming data.

Dec. 9:

– Sarah Palin, who only weeks earlier decried the hacking of e-mails, writes in an op-ed that the Climategate e-mails are proof that anthropogenic global warming does not exist. The Washington Post publishes Palin’s op-ed, despite the fact it is riddled with errors and outright falsehoods.

The Department of Treasury issues a report and says, “Here, Mr. President, boy, that looks like it is going to suck. It is going to cost $1,761.” Got it?

Watch it:

STEP ONE: “News” generated by right-wing think tank. On September 15, the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Chris Horner begins shopping around two internal Treasury Department memos about cap-and-trade proposals, one written by the Bush administration in November 2008, one written in March 2009. CEI is a corporate-funded think tank that has opposed regulation of dioxin, cigarette smoking, global warming, prescription drugs, alcohol, and bovine growth hormone.

STEP TWO: Right-wing print journalists write “breaking news” story. Chris Horner feeds the documents to Amanda Carpenter at the right-wing Washington Times and libertarian blogger Declan McCullagh at CBSNews.com. McCullagh’s blog post, “Obama Admin: Cap And Trade Could Cost Families $1,761 A Year,” has a better headline than Carpenter’s “Hot Button” story.

STEP THREE: Promoted by Drudge, story repeated endlessly on right-wing blogs, Twitter, and talk radio. On Wednesday, the Drudge Report promotes McCullagh’s story. The “$1,761″ figure is picked up by Politico’s Ben Smith, Hot Air, Townhall.com, RedState, and hordes of right-wing Tweeters.

STEP FOUR: Republican politicians, right-wing think tanks, and polluter front groups release statements of shock and outrage. Despite the rapid response of the Treasury Department calling the stories “flat out wrong” and “misrepresentations of the facts,” the House Republican Conference, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), the American Petroleum Institute, and the Heritage Foundation promote the figures.

STEP FIVE: On Fox News, Glenn Beck calls President Obama a liar/socialist/Marxist/communist/fascist/racist. On Thursday afternoon, after discussing the story on his radio show in the afternoon, Beck rails for nearly ten minutes about President Obama’s “cover-up” and “outright lies.”

Unreported by Beck, the Congressional Budget Office on Thursday estimated that the average household cost of the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act would be 44 cents per day.

(It should be noted that Ben Smith quickly posted a correction for his blog post when Declan McCullagh’s story was called into question. CBS officials, however, have only made McCullagh stop inflating his job title.)

To prove his points, he brought on R.J. Smith of the Exxon-funded Competitive Enterprise Institute and Chris Horner, author of the Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism. Horner — who is also a senior fellow at CEI — predictably argued that “[g]lobal warming is not a likely suspect” for the fires and Smith said that “the greens have made things worse by stopping all [fuels] management.” Watch it:

These claims have been echoed by the right-wing blogs. Michelle Malkin blamed “litigious environmentalists” for “standing in the way” of Bush’s Healthy Forests Initiative (HFI).

In 2002, Bush proposed HFI, which advocated “thinning” forests to decrease the risk of wildfires. But more than anything else, it was an attempt to curry favor with the timber and logging industries, which donated more than $1 million to Bush’s 2000 campaign. HFI allowed loggers to cut down large, valuable trees miles from at-risk communities, allegedly in order to finance the removal of the smaller brush that fuels wildfires.

Environmentalists don’t oppose removing brush and chapparal in at-risk areas, but logging in backforests has nothing to do with wildfire prevention. Removing brush is not a solution in itself. A 2006 study by Prof. A.L. Westerling, et al. concludes that addressing global warming needs to go hand-in-hand:

[L]arge increases in wildfire driven by increased temperatures and earlier spring snowmelts in forests where land-use history had little impact on fire risks indicates that ecological restoration and fuels management alone will not be sufficient to reverse current wildfire trends.

Earlier this year, the Nobel Prize-winning IPCC wrote that “a warming climate encourages wildfires through a longer summer period that dries fuels, promoting easier ignition and faster spread.” Los Angeles went 150 days without measurable rainfall this past year, and such drought will likely get worse. A group of leading British climate scientists found that extreme drought will affect about a third of the planet and spread across half of the earth’s land surface by 2100 because of global warming.

The Center for American Progress’s Daniel J. Weiss has more about global warming’s effects on wildfires.

UPDATE: Michael Roston at Huffington Post points out that in June, government auditors warned the Bush administration about shortcomings in its firefighting plan.

UPDATE II: Joe Romm at Climate Progress and Adam Siegel at EnergySmart have more.

Digg It!

Transcript:

BECK: But first, for the second consecutive day, wildfires are sweeping through California, especially beach front cities like Malibu and San Diego. And I want to get one thing straight right from the start. Loss of life, property, tragic. The people who are fighting these fires, heroes.

But I got to tell you, the story just pisses me off. I grew up in the Pacific Northwest. Wildfire may be a natural disaster, but you’ve got to stop kidding yourself, America and pretending that man isn’t partly to blame for making things worse.

I remember spending my summers at my grandfather’s house at his farm. I can still see him screaming at that old Zenith TV that we had in the living room, yelling about how the mismanagement of our forests is going to get people killed one day.

You ask any farmer, anybody who’s lived closely with the land, and they’ll tell you, you can’t change Mother Nature. We’re the ones screwing things up. Why does this global warming phenomenon only seem to happen in our part of the globe? Why have we — why have we tried for decades to stop the natural cycle of burn and regrowth? And most importantly, why do we think that we can continue to believe that man knows best, when every bit of evidence tells us it ain’t true?

Mother Nature is tough enough. We don’t need to make matters worse with our bad environmental policies.

Chris Horner is the author of “Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism.” And R.J. Smith is an adjunct environmental analyst with the competitive Enterprise Institute.

Let me — let me start with you, R.J. How much money do you get from big oil?

R.J. SMITH, ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE: I don`t think big oil has anything to do with — with the forest fires.

BECK: OK.

SMITH: And — and I’m not sure. I mean — environmentalists get big oil money themselves, too.

BECK: Look, here’s the thing. We’re going to talk about things that are politically incorrect. Nobody else on television is going to say this. And I know all the bloggers are right now going, “Oh, big oil, big oil, big oil. They’re going to deny global warming.”

I’m not denying global warming. But, Chris, let me ask you this. I keep hearing that this is global warming that’s doing this. And I keep thinking to myself, how many years have we let the underbrush grow, and nobody will do anything? If the super fires are caused by global warming, wouldn’t these super fires be happening all around the globe? Are they, or are they not?

CHRIS HORNER, AUTHOR, “POLITICALLY INCORRECT GUIDE TO GLOBAL WARMING”: Well, fire happens everywhere. And it is a natural disaster if man’s there. Otherwise it’s a disaster purely for nature, but again, it is natural.

Global warming is not a likely suspect for the following reason. The warming that the alarmists are talking about is one degree Fahrenheit over the past 150 years, most of which occurred before World War II. None of which are occurred in the last decade.

OK. We can reliably take global warming off the suspect list.

Second, it’s not clear that a warmer world would be a drier world. As you know, Glenn, they rely on computer models to scare us. The computer models disagree with each other.

The two that the United States used for an Al Gore-produced report as they left office said the Red River Valley was going to be a flood plain or a desert. So, you know, prepare for it.

BECK: OK. So, R.J., let me — help me out. Because if I hear the — if I hear global warming one more time, blood is going to shoot out of my eyes.

SMITH: It has little, if anything, to do with global warming, Glenn. What happens — I mean, you’re right from what you’ve learned in Washington state. [...]

BECK: R.J., true or false, that they actually — the environmentalists, the same ones that going to tell me it’s my fault because I have an SUV, these same damn environmentalists are the ones that have stopped people in California from clearing brush on their own property.

SMITH: Precisely. First, the feds made things bad with 100 years of mismanagement and then, starting around 1975, 1980, into there, the greens made things worse by stopping all management. No management.

And they said fire was natural and it was natural regulation and let it burn, particularly in the national parks. And you saw what happened in Yellowstone, the great experiment. It burned down half the park. That’s their big success story, and they love that. I mean, their chief biologist out there was chanting “Burn, baby, burn,” as the fire roared through his study plots.

One of the Audubon Society board members who teaches children for the Audubon Society said the biggest disaster of the Yellowstone fires was that they did not destroy the town of West Yellowstone, which is the entrance to the park, because it was all ticky-tacky and neon cluttered and it should have been reduced to ashes.

That’s the philosophy of the greens.

But when Horner attended last week’s U.N. Climate Change conference, he appeared not as a lobbyist, but as a journalist.

Horner attended the State Department’s Dec. 7 briefing with press credentials from the right-wing Washington Times. ThinkProgress spoke with Andrew Buncombe of London’s Independent, who confirmed that Horner was at the press-only briefing without even a notebook in hand. In a Jeff Gannon-style presentation, Horner promoted the Bush administration position, suggesting the U.S. position be portrayed as leading a “new consensus.”

In fact, the United States position is neither new, nor does it resemble anything like a consensus. More than 150 countries, including nearly every industrialized nation except the United States and Australia, agreed “to engage in talks aimed at producing a new set of binding limits on greenhouse gas emissions that would take effect beginning in 2012.”

Horner is not a journalist. He has published just a single op-ed in the Washington Times since 2003, and has never written a hard news article for the paper, according to a database search.

But he is quite experienced at underhanded tactics. He drew up plans, funded by ExxonMobil, to destroy Europe’s support for the Kyoto treaty on climate change.” The plan hoped to emulate the White Houses’s “success” in stalling progress on climate change: “In the US an informal coalition has helped successfully to avert adoption of a Kyoto-style program. This model should be emulated, as appropriate, to guide similar efforts in Europe.”